With a howl of fear, the little Jew sprang through the door and disappeared in the darkness.

Musa laughed contemptuously.

“Ha, lack-brained cur!” he said, “I would not have hurt him, having broken bread with him in mine own tent!  Yet, friend Persian, one cannot hear one’s own people, and one’s own temple, the temple of his fathers, desecrated by the tongue of a lack-brained Jew trinket-vender.”

“You know, then, of this Caaba—­of the God they worship there?” asked the priest.

Musa shook his head, and made a gesture of denial.

“Musa knows little of such things,” he replied.  “Yet the Caaba is a name sacred in Arabian tradition, and as such, it suits me ill to hear it on the tongue of a craven-hearted Jew.  In sooth, the coward knave has left his trumpery bundle all open as it is.  I warrant me he will come back for it in good time.”

A dark-haired lad in a striped silk garment here passed through the tent.

“Hither, Kedar!” called the Sheikh.  “Recite for our visitor the story of Moses.”

The lad at once began the story, reciting it in a sort of chant, and accompanying his words with many a gesture.  The company listened breathlessly, now giving vent to deep groans as the persecution of the children of Israel was described, now bowing their heads in reverence at the revelation of the burning bush, now waving their arms in excitement and starting forward with flashing eyes as the lad pictured the passage of the Red Sea.

Yusuf had heard some vague account of the story before, but, with the passionate nature of the Oriental, he was strangely moved as he listened to the recital of how that great God whom he longed to feel and know had led the children of Israel through all their wanderings and sufferings to the promised land.  He felt that he too was indeed a wanderer, seeking the promised land.  He was but an infant in the true things of the Spirit.  Like many another who longs vainly for a revelation of the working of the Holy Spirit, his soul seemed to reach out hopelessly.

But who can tell how tenderly the same All-wise Creator treasures up every outreaching of the struggling soul!  Not one throb of the loving and longing heart is lost;—­and Yusuf was yet, after trial, to rejoice in the serene fullness of such light as may fall upon this terrestrial side of death’s dividing line.

Poor Yusuf, with all his Persian learning and wisdom, had, through all his life, known only a religion tinctured with idolatry.  Almost alone he had broken from that idolatry, and realized the unity of God and his separation from all connected with such worship; but he was yet to understand the connection of God with man, and to taste the fullness of God’s love through Christ.  He had not realized that the finger of God is upon the life of every man who is willing to yield himself to Divine direction, and that there is thus an inseparable link between the Creator and