“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 noised abroad.  From holding meetings in caves and private houses, the “prophet” had begun to preach on the streets, and from the top of the little eminence Safa, near the foot of Abu Kubays.

Many of the people of Mecca held him up to ridicule, and treated his declarations with derisive contempt.  Among his strongest opponents were his own kindred, the Koreish, of the line of Haschem and of the rival line of Abd Schems.  The head of the latter tribe, Abu Sofian, Mohammed’s uncle, was especially bitter.  He was a formidable foe, as he lived in the highlands, his castles being built on precipitous rocks, and manned by a set of wild and savage Arabs.

Yet Mohammed went on, neither daunted by fear nor discouraged by sarcasm.  The number of his followers steadily increased; his first converts, Ali, his cousin, and Zeid, his faithful servant, being quickly joined by many others.

Mohammed now boldly proclaimed the message delivered to him in the cave of Hira the Koran.  He declared that the law of Moses had given way to the Gospel, and that the Gospel was now to give way to the Koran; that the Savior was a great prophet, but was not divine; and that he, Mohammed, was to be the last and greatest of all the prophets.

Such assertions were usually received with shouts of derision; and yet, when Mohammed eloquently upheld fairness and sincerity in all public and private dealings, and urged the giving of alms, and the living of a pure and humble life, there were those who, like Amzi, felt that there was something worthy of admiration in the new prophet’s religion; and his very firmness and sincerity, even when spat upon, and covered with mud thrown upon him as he prayed in the Caaba, won for him friends.