As the shades of the rapidly-falling Eastern twilight drew on, Yusuf sat idly near the door of a tent, looking out listlessly, and listening to the chatter of the people about him.

Not far off a Jewish boy, a mere child, of one of the northern tribes, as shown by his fair hair and blue eyes, sang plaintively a song of the singing of birds and the humming of bees, of the flowers of the North, of rippling streams, of the miraged desert, of the waving of the tamarisk and the scent of roses.

Yusuf observed the child-like form and the effeminate paleness of the cherub face, and a feeling of protective pity throbbed in his bosom as he noted the slender smallness of the hand that glided over the one-stringed guitar, showing by its movements, even in the fading evening light, the blue veins that coursed beneath the transparent skin.  He called the lad to his side, and bade him sing to him.  Not till then did he notice the vacancy of the look which bespoke a slightly wandering mind.  Yusuf’s great heart filled with sympathy.

“Poor lad!” he said, “singing all alone!  Where are your friends?”

“Dumah’s friends?” said the child, wonderingly.  “Poor Dumah has no friends now!  He goes here and there, and people are kind to him—­because Dumah sings, you know, and only angels sing.  He tells them of flocks beside the pool, of lilies of Siloam, of birds in the air and angels in the heavens—­then everyone is kind.  Ah! the world is fair!” he continued, with a happy smile.  “The breeze blows hot here, sometimes, but so cool over the sea; and the lilies blow in the vales of Galilee, and the waves ripple bright over the sea where he once walked.”

“Who, child?”

“Jesus—­don’t you know?” with a wondering look.  “He sat often by the Lake of Galilee where I have sat, and the night winds lifted his hair as they do mine, and he smiled and healed poor suffering and sinful people.  Ah, he did indeed!  Poor Dumah is talking sense now, good stranger; sometimes he does not—­the thoughts come and go before he can catch them, and then people say, ‘Poor little Dumah is demented.’  But if Jesus were here now, Dumah would be healed.  I dreamed one night I saw him, and he smiled, and looked upon me so sweetly and said, ’Dumah loves me!  Dumah loves me!’ and then I saw him no more.  Friend, I know you love him, too.  What is your name?”

“Yusuf.”

“Then, Yusuf, you will be my friend?”

“I will be your friend, poor Dumah!”

“Oh, no, Dumah is not poor!  He is happy.  But his thoughts are going now.  Ah, they throng!  The visions come!  The birds and the mists and the flowers are twining in a wreath, a wreath that stretches up to the clouds!  Do you not see it?” and he started off again on his wild, plaintive song.

Yusuf’s eyes filled with tears, and he drew the lad to his bosom, and looked out upon the grassy plot before the door, where a huge fire was now shedding a flickering and fantastic glare upon the wrinkled visages of the Arabs, and lighting up the scene with a weird effect only to be seen in the Orient.