Yusuf’s happiest hours were those spent in the little Jewish Christian church, a poor, uncomfortable building, where an earnest handful of Jews, who were nevertheless firm believers in the divinity of Christ, met, often in secret, always in fear of the derisive Arabs, for prayer and study of the Gospel.  Among these, the wife of Nathan was never absent.

Yusuf sought untiringly to solve the mystery of the gold cup.  Circumstantial evidence was certainly against Nathan.  Awad, a rich merchant of Mecca, had placed the cup near a window in his house, and had forgotten to remove it ere retiring for the night.  A short time before dawn he had heard a noise and risen to see what it was.  He had gone outside just in time to see a figure passing hurriedly across a small field near his house.  Even then he had not thought of the cup.  But in the morning it was missed, and tracks were followed from the window as far as the ruined house to which Nathan’s family had gone in their poverty.  The house was searched, and the cup was found hidden in a heap of rubbish in an unused apartment.

Nathan had just returned with little save the clothes he wore; it was well known that his wife and children had been verging on starvation, and the public, ever ready to judge, formed its own conclusion, and turned with Nemesis eye upon the poor Jew.

No clue whatever remained, except a small carnelian, which Yusuf found afterwards upon the floor, and which he took possession of at once.  For hours he would wander about, hoping to find some trace of the robber, who, he firmly believed, had fancied himself followed by Awad, and had hurriedly secreted the cup, trusting to return for it later, and to make his escape in the meantime.

All this, however, 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.