Amzi was now talking quickly and impressively.

Yusuf was amazed.  The light was beginning to shine so brightly in his own soul that he could not comprehend why others could not see and believe likewise.  He talked with his friend until the dawn began to tint the top of Abu Kubays, but without effect.  At every turn he was met by the bitter prejudice held by the Meccans against the whole Jewish race, a prejudice which kept even Amzi the benevolent from believing in anything advocated by them.

“Why do they not show Christ in their lives, then?” he would say.

“You cannot judge the whole Christian band by the misdeeds of a few, who are, indeed, no Christians,” Yusuf pleaded.

“True; yet a religion such as you describe should appeal to more of them, and would, if it were all you imagine it to be.  A perfect religion should be exemplified in the lives of those who profess it.”

“I grant you that that is true,” was Yusuf’s reply.  “And as an example let me bring you to Nathan and his family.  Nobody could talk for one hour to them without feeling that they have found, at least, something which we do not possess.  This something, they say, is their God.”

“Well, well.  I shall do so to please you,” said Amzi indifferently, “but I hope that a longer acquaintance may not spoil your trust in these people.”

Further expostulation was vain.  Yusuf retired to his own apartment, and prayed long and fervently, in his own simple way, offering thanks for the light which was breaking so radiantly on his own soul, and beseeching the loving Jesus to touch the heart of Amzi, who, he knew, though less enthusiastic than he, also desired to know truth.

And before he lay down for a short rest, he said: 

“Grant, O Jesus, thou who art ever present, that I may know thee better, and that Amzi, too, may learn to know thee.  Reveal thyself to him as thou art revealing thyself to me, that we may know thee as we should.”

The priest’s face grew radiant with happiness as he concluded.

And yet, in that same city, vice held sway; for, even as the priest prayed, a dark figure emerged from an unused upper attic in the house of Nathan the Jew, and, escaping by a window, descended a garden stair and disappeared in the darkness.  Even in that dim light, had one looked he might have noted that the mysterious prowler wore the dress of a dervish.

CHAPTER VI.

Yusuf’s first meeting with Mohammed.

“A person with abnormal auditory sensations often comes to interpret them as voices of demons, or as the voice of one commanding him to do some deed.  This hallucination, in turn, becomes an apperceiving organ, i.e., other perceptions and ideas are assimilated to it:  it becomes a center about which many ideas gather and are correspondingly distorted.”—­McLellan,