did not help poor Nathan, who, chained and fettered,
languished in a close, poorly-ventilated cell, with little hope of
deliverance. Yusuf knew the rancor of the Meccans against the Jews, and
somewhat feared the result, yet he did not give up hope.

"We are praying for him," Nathan's wife would say. "Nathan and Yusuf are
praying too, and we know that whatever happens must be best, since God
has willed it so for us."

Little Manasseh chafed more than anyone at the long suspense. One day he
said:

"Mother, my name means blackness, sorrow, or something like that, does
it not? Why did you call me Manasseh? Was it to be an omen of my life?"

"Forbid that it should!" the mother exclaimed, passing her hand lovingly
through his waving hair. "It must have been because of your curls, black
as a raven's wing. Sorrow will not be always. Joy may come soon; but if
not, 'at eventide it shall be light.'"

"Does that mean in heaven?" he asked.

"He has prepared for us a mansion in the heavens, an house not made with
hands. 'There shall be no night there,' and 'sorrow and sighing shall
flee away,'" said the mother with a far-away look in her eyes.

"But it seems so long to wait, mother," said the boy impatiently.

"Yet heaven is not far away, Manasseh," she returned, quickly. "Heaven
is wherever God is. And have we not him with us always? 'In all thy ways
acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.' Never forget that,
Manasseh."

"Well, I wish we were a little happier now," he would say; and then, to
divert the boy's attention from his present troubles, his mother would
tell him about her happy home in Palestine, where she and her little
sister, Lois, had watched their sheep on the green hillsides, and woven
chains of flowers to put about the neck of their pet lamb; of how they
grew up, and Lois married the Bedouin Musa, and had gone far away.

Thus far, Yusuf knew nothing of this connection of Nathan's family with
his Bedouin friends. It was yet to prove another link in the chain which
was binding him so closely to this godly family. His many occupations,
and the feeling which impelled him at every spare moment to seek for
some clue which would lead to Nathan's liberation, left him little time
for conversation with them for the present, except to see that their
wants were supplied.

Then, too, he was troubled about Amzi, and somewhat anxious about the
result of Mohammed's proclamations, which were now beginning to be
no