“I hate the last word! A knight enchanted of Mary can never become a renegade; not I, at least. I was born October ninth. Tradition says that the holy St. John Damascene, having had his hand cut off by the Saracens that day, was by Our Lady miraculously made whole, and lived long after to wield a powerful, facile pen in her behalf. I’ll trust my head and saber hand, used for her, to her protection.”
“And I’ll trust Him that led the wandering hosts of Moses; for ‘in all their affliction, He was afflicted with them, and the angel of His presence saved them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old.’ Oh, master, I’ve comfort I can not tell, when I feel orphaned, by thinking of my Maker, not only as a Father, but as a Mother! God is our Mother when we, bereft of mother-love, most feel our need of it. So thou toldst me in the mountains.”
“True; but shall we try our escape now?”
“Nay, we had better wait till a little before dawn; the camp patrol is then withdrawn; then we’ll embrace freedom.”
“The Jew seems very confident.”
“Oh, I spent the hour after I met Nourahmal (God keep her), amid the palms for which Jericho is fitly named, and got a token.”
“A token?”
“My eyes were touched in the darkness.”
“Sweet Nourahmal followed thee?”
“No, but He that opened the eyes of blind Bartimeus near here.”