“Now, proud Yusuf,” he said, “has come Abraham’s day.  Once it was Yusuf’s day; then the poor peddler, the little dervish, was scourged and chained, and well-nigh smothered in that vile Meccan chamber.  Now it has come Abraham’s day, and Yusuf and Abraham will be even.  How does this suit your angelic constitution?  Angelic as you are, you cannot slip through chains and bolted doors so easily as the little Jew.  Oh, Yusuf, are you not happy?  Uzza hates you; I saw it in his face.  Did you ever know him before?” The Jew’s propensity for news was to the fore as usual.

Yusuf answered nothing.

“Tell me,” said the Jew, giving him a shake, “what does Uzza know of you?”

“He knows,” said a thin, grating voice from behind, “that Yusuf’s hands reek with the blood of Uzza’s only child, the fair little Imri, murdered in the cause of religion; and ere I could reach him—­yes, priest, with vengeance in my heart, for had I found you then your blood would have blotted out the stain of my child’s on your altar!—­the false priest had fled, forsaken the reeking altar, left it black in ashes, black as his own false heart.  And then, that vengeance might be satisfied, was Uzza’s blade turned against the aged grandmother who had delivered the little one up to Persian gods.  O priest, your work is past, but not forgotten!”

“Uzza,” cried the priest, “I neither ask nor hope for mercy.  Yet would God I could restore you your child!  Its smile and its death gurgle have haunted my dreams through these long years!  ’Twas in my heathendom I did it!”

“That excuse will not give her back to me,” said Uzza, stepping out of the room with the Jew, as the warden came with the keys.

It was not Uzza’s purpose to bring about Yusuf’s speedy death.  As the cat torments the mouse which has fallen into its power, so he resolved to keep the priest on the rack for a considerable length of time.

Hearing of the conversation between him and Asru, he knew that exquisite torture could be inflicted on the priest through Dumah, and determined to strike at him first through the poor singer.  Dumah’s execution was, accordingly, ordered.

Early one morning, Amzi, looking out of a little chink in his window through which the bare court-yard below was visible, was horrified to see a scene revolting in its every detail, and over which we shall hasten as speedily as may be.

There in the gray morning light stood Yusuf, bound and forced to look on at the death of the bright-haired singer, whose sunny smile had been as a ray of sunshine to the two men.

Amzi looked on as if turned to stone—­heard Dumah’s last cheerful words, “Do not weep, Yusuf; it will be all flowers, all angels, soon.  Dumah is going home happy,”—­then, he fell on his face, and so lay for hours unconscious of all.  Reason came slowly back, and he realized that another of the tragedies only too common in those perilous days had taken place.