"Say—'Please, Lord, make Shelah a good child, for Christ's sake,'" said Harold, choosing the simplest petition which rose to his mind.
"I know a better prayer than that," said Shelah.
"'O God, teach me to love Thee, for the sake of the Lord Jesus.'
"The kind lady taught me to say that, and Robin gave me a verse:
"'God is love.'"
"Keep those two precious remembrances of them!" exclaimed Harold, his dry, heated eyes relieved by unwonted moisture. "Sing them daily, say them again and again, till we all meet on the beautiful shore."
Harold himself was no longer utterly wretched. That calm spirit of submission had come over his mind, which has been compared to the bending down of the ripe, golden corn, the sign that the harvest time is near.
So onward proceeded Hartley with the Arab banditti towards Djauf; whilst Robin, with the Persians, was from another quarter impatiently pressing on in the same direction. But the little delay which had been occasioned by Hassan's flight on Firdosi had prevented the two movements from coinciding in point of time. In the city of Djauf the two young Knights of St. John were never to meet.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
SLAVERY.