, you know, and Yusuf,
who, when the plague was raging, spent weeks in attending the sick. Did
he not come to father and sit with him night after night, when,
mother--I shame to say it--both you and I fled!"

The mother walked in silence for a moment.

"There must be some strange power that urges a man to do such acts," she
said, musingly. "It would be easier far to go out to battle, urged on
by the enthusiasm of conquest, and cheered by the music and clash of
timbrels to deeds of bravery. It takes a different spirit to enter the
houses of filthy disease, to court death in reeking lazar-houses, to sit
for weeks watching hideous faces and listening to the ravings of madmen
through the long, hot nights of the plague-season."

"Mother, I am convinced that their religion prompts them to do it. What
else can it be?"

"What is their religion?"

"I know not; yet we may know for the going, perhaps. See, the lights
gleam in their little hall. They hold meeting to-night. Let us go."

"What! And let the proud tribe of the Koreish, the guardians of the
Caaba, see a woman of the Koreish enter there?"

"We can go in long cloaks, mother, and it is well-nigh dark. Come, will
you not?"

The pleading voice was so earnest that the mother consented. Yet, that
the influence of the gods in the result of the battle might not be lost,
they first entered their own house, prostrated themselves before the
gods, and besought their aid in the Koreish cause. Then, donning long
outer cloaks, and veiling their faces closely, the two slipped out of a
back way and stealthily hastened towards the Jewish church.

It was late when they arrived. Neither Yusuf nor Amzi was present to
raise the hearts of their hearers with words of simple and earnest
piety, no voice of Manasseh was there to lead in the songs of praise,
but an old man with snowy hair and a saint-like face was standing behind
a table, a volume of the Scriptures before him, and the voices of the
congregation, some twenty in number, arose in the old, yet ever new
words:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my
soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort
me."

The Koreish woman listened. She could not understand all th