Asru,
and his lonely burial.

"I must seek his widow and his children," said he. "This is all I have
brought them;" and he drew the tangled, blood-stained lock of hair from
his bosom.

Silence fell on the little group as they looked upon it, then Yusuf's
tones, falling like the low, deep cadence of a chant, repeated the
words:

"And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb
shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his
face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no
night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the
Lord God giveth them light; and they shall reign forever and forever."

"Amen!" responded Amzi, fervently. And Manasseh looked out of the window
towards the bright heavens above Abu Kubays, imagining that he could see
Asru, clad in shining apparel, with a happy smile on his lips, and the
courageous eyes of old looking forth with a new love-light from his
radiant countenance.

"Do you know his family?" he asked.

"Ah, yes; they are now regular attendants at the Christian church. They
have destroyed all their household gods."

"What!" exclaimed Manasseh, "is this true! How I wish Asru had known it!
What joy it would have given him!"

Amzi smiled. "Dare you think, Manasseh, that he does not know it long
ere this,--that he did not know it even at the breach of Khaibar? I like
to think that our Asru now has a spiritual body wholly independent of
time or space, capable of transporting itself whenever and wherever the
mind dictates."

"We cannot know these things as they are, in this time," remarked Yusuf.
"But the day is not very far distant now, Amzi, when you and I shall
explore these mysteries for ourselves."

So the talk went on. Kedar listened with interest. He thought it a
curious conversation, and felt so strangely out of place that it seemed
as though he were dreaming, and listening to the talk of genii.

Next morning he was in a decided fever. Then came long days of pain and
nights of delirium, in which Manasseh and his two friends hovered like
ministering spirits about the youth, whose wounds had healed only to
give place to disease far more deadly. In those terrible nights of
burning heat his parched tongue swelled so that he could scarcely
swallow; he tossed in agony, now fancying himself chained to a rock
unable to move, while the prophet urged him on to the heights above
where the battle wa