The youth was slight and agile, his every movement full of grace.  His face was oval, regular in its contour, and full of expression, although the Jewish cast of his features had traces of Arab blood.  He seemed to be in some excitement, for, with a trait peculiar to Bedouins, his restless and deep-set eyes were now half-closed until but a narrow, glittering line appeared, and now suddenly opened to their fullest extent and turned directly upon the woman to whom he talked.

“Would you have me branded among the whole tribe as a coward, mother?” he was saying.  “Are not the Bedouin lads from all over the Nejd flocking to the field, even as the sparrows flock before the storm clouds of the north?  And will the son of Musa be the craven, crouching at home in his mother’s nest?”

“A flock of vultures are they, rather!” she cried passionately—­“Vultures flocking to a feast of blood, to gloat over the carrion of brothers, sons, and husbands, left dead on the reeking plain, while in their solitary homes the women moan, even as moans the bird of the tamarisk, robbed of its young.”

“’Tis your Jewish heart speaks now, mother.  Ah, but your Jewish women are too soft-hearted!  Know you not that Bedouin mothers have not only sent their sons to battle, but have gone themselves and fought in the thickest of the fray?”

“Ah, you are a true Bedouin, and ashamed of your mother!” returned Lois, with a sigh.  “Truly, a Jewess has no place among the tribes of the wilderness.”

The youth’s face softened.  “I am not ashamed of my mother!” he said, quickly.  “But my blood leaps for the glory of battle, for the clash of cymbals, the speed of the charge, the tumult, and the victory!”

“But a hollow glory you will find it,” she said scornfully.  “Murder and pillage,—­and all sanctioned in the name of religion!”

“Even so, is not the name of harami (brigand) accounted honorable among the desert tribes?” asked the youth, quickly.

“Alas, yes.  Ye reck not that it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’  But you, Kedar, care not for the Jewish Scripture.  Why need I quote it to you.”

“Arabian religion, Arabian honor, for the Arab, say I!” returned the youth haughtily.  “Let me roam over the wild on my steed, racing with the breeze, lance in hand, bound for the hunt or fray; let me swoop upon the cowardly caravans whose hundreds shriek and scream and fall back before a handful of Bedouin lads, if I will.  More honorable it is to me than to plod along in a shugduf on a long-legged camel with a bag of corn or a trifle of cloth to look after.  Be the Jew if you will, but give me the leaping blood, the soaring spirit of the Bedouin!”

The woman sighed again.  “You will be killed, Kedar,” she said.  “Then what will all this profit you?”

“To die on the field is more glorious than to breathe one’s life out tamely in bed,” replied the other.

There was no use of reasoning with this rash youth.