t a child, who was gliding quickly on in
the shadows. Once or twice she seemed to stagger, then she fell. Yusuf
hurried to her, and turned her face to the starlight. Even in that dim
light he could see that it was contorted with pain. Yusuf heard the
murmur of voices in a low building close at hand, and, without waiting
to knock, he lifted the girl in his arms, opened the door, and passed
in.

CHAPTER V.

NATHAN THE JEW.

"I shall be content, whatever happens, for what God chooses must
be better than what I can choose."--_Epictetus._

The same evening on which Yusuf visited the temple, a woman and her two
children sat in a dingy little room with an earthen floor, in one of the
most dilapidated streets of Mecca. The woman's face bore traces of want
and suffering, yet there was a calm dignity and hopefulness in her
countenance, and her voice was not despairing. She sat upon a bundle of
rushes placed on the floor. No lamp lighted the apartment, but through
an opening in the wall the soft starlight shone upon the bands of hair
that fell in little braids over her forehead. Her two beautiful children
were beside her, the girl with her arm about her mother, and the boy's
head on her lap.

"Will we have only hard cake for breakfast, mother, and to-morrow my
birthday, too?" he was saying.

"That is all, my little Manasseh, unless the good Father sees fit to
send us some way of earning more. You know even the hairs of our heads
are numbered, so he takes notice of the poorest and weakest of his
children, and has promised us that there will be no lack to them that
fear him."

"But, mother, we have had lack many, many times," said the boy
thoughtfully.

The mother smiled. "But things have usually come right in the end," she
said, "and you know 'Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' We
cannot understand all these things now, but it will be plain some day.
'We will trust, and not be afraid,' because our trust is in the Lord;
and we know that 'he will perfect that which concerneth us,' if we trust
him."

"And will he send father home soon?" asked the boy. "We have been
praying for him to come, so, so long! Do you think God hears us, mother?
Why doesn't he send father home?"

The woman's head drooped, and a tear rolled down her cheek, but her
voice was calm and firm.

"Manasseh, child," she said, "your father may never return; bu