“Think you it will be safe for so small a band to face the dangers of the desert alone?” asked Kedar.

“A caravan leaves for Damascus to-morrow,” replied Manasseh.  “Fortunately we may obtain its protection.”

“Good!  Then I shall turn aside to the table-lands of Nejd and see my parents again,” said Kedar.

“Think you your parents would join our band?”

Kedar shook his head.  “Not likely.  You see my father has lived all his days as a Bedouin.  To be tied down to commerce he would consider a degradation.  Neither would he become a shepherd, as watching sheep is a task held fit for women only in our tribe.”

“And will you stay with them, Kedar?” asked Manasseh.

“I know not.  We will see what the future has in store; but, at any rate,” he added, half slyly, “your cousin Kedar will wear the Moslem turban no more.”

The tone, rather than the words, told all.  Manasseh took a quick, sharp look at the face smiling quietly in the moonlight, then he seized Kedar’s hand warmly and whispered, “I am glad.”

The following day was spent in packing and bidding adieux.  Yusuf and Amzi passed the last hours among their poor, and, from the housetop, Kedar and Manasseh saw them returning in the evening, followed by a ragged crowd who clung to their gowns or wiped tearful eyes with tattered sleeves.

The sun went down as the caravan left the city, and on an eminence above, the little Jewish band stopped to take a last look at their old home—­Mecca, with its low houses, its crooked streets, its mystic Caaba, and its weird mountain scenery.

All gray it lay beneath the shades of falling night; yet, as they looked, a wondrous change ensued.  Gradually the landscape began to brighten; the houses shone forth; the aloe trees became green; the side of Abu Kubays sparkled with a seemingly self-emitted light; the rocks of the red mountain were dyed with a rosy glow; the Caaba grew more and more distinct, until even the folds of its kiswah were visible; and the sand of the narrow valley shone, beneath a saffron sky above, with a coppery radiance.  It was the wondrous “after-glow” of the Orient,—­a scene unique in its beauty, yet not often beheld in so sheltered a spot as Mecca.

The exiles, with tearful eyes, looked upon the fair landscape, which thus seemed to bid them an inanimate farewell.  Then, as the glow paled and the rocks again took their sombre hue, and the city faded in redoubled shadow, the little band turned slowly away, and followed in the wake of the caravan now winding through the pass at some distance.

The Hebrew band consisted of twenty souls, among whom were Sherah, the daughter of Asru, and her mother, and the old white-haired man Benjamin, who had preached in the church and had become a father indeed to Asru’s family.

Needless to speak of the long, tedious journey.  Suffice it to say that, while the caravan wound through the north of El Hejaz, Kedar and Manasseh turned aside to the fresher plateaux of the Nejd, and the Bedouin once more found himself amid the scenes of his boyhood.