ime,
especially in the provinces where he had laboured for three years, and
on the whole with success; are they and their children to suffer? But
you will say they became Christians. Admit it. We were originally a
nation of twelve tribes; ten, long before the advent of Jesus, had been
carried into captivity and scattered over the East and the Mediterranean
world; they are probably the source of the greater portion of the
existing Hebrews; for we know that, even in the time of Jesus, Hebrews
came up to Jerusalem at the Passover from every province of the Roman
Empire. What had they to do with the crucifixion or the rejection?'

'The fate of the Ten Tribes is a deeply interesting question,' said
Tancred; 'but involved in, I fear, inexplicable-obscurity. In England
there are many who hold them to be represented by the Afghans, who state
that their ancestors followed the laws of Moses. But perhaps they ceased
to exist and were blended with their conquerors.'

'The Hebrews have never blended with their conquerors,' said the lady,
proudly. 'They were conquered frequently, like all small states situate
amid rival empires. Syria was the battlefield of the great monarchies.
Jerusalem has not been conquered oftener than Athens, or treated worse;
but its people, unhappily, fought too bravely and rebelled too often, so
at last they were expatriated. I hold that, to believe that the Hebrew
communities are in a principal measure the descendants of the Ten
Tribes, and of the other captivities preceding Christ, is a just,
and fair, and sensible inference, which explains circumstances that
otherwise could not be explicable. But let that pass. We will suppose
all the Jews in all the cities of the world to be the lineal descendants
of the mob who shouted at the crucifixion. Yet another question! My
grandfather is a Bedouin sheikh, chief of one of the most powerful
tribes of the desert. My mother was his daughter. He is a Jew; his whole
tribe are Jews; they read and obey the five books, live in tents, have
thousands of camels, ride horses of the Nedjed breed, and care for
nothing except Jehovah, Moses, and their mares. Were they at Jerusalem
at the crucifixion, and does the shout of the rabble touch them? Yet my
mother marries a Hebrew of the cities, and a man, too, fit to sit on the
throne of King Solomon; and a little Christian Yahoor with a round hat,
who sells figs at Smyrna, will cross the street if he see her, lest he
should be cont