"Do you know his family?" he asked.
"Ah, yes; they are now regular attendants at the Christian church. They have destroyed all their household gods."
"What!" exclaimed Manasseh, "is this true! How I wish Asru had known it! What joy it would have given him!"
Amzi smiled. "Dare you think, Manasseh, that he does not know it long ere this,—that he did not know it even at the breach of Khaïbar? I like to think that our Asru now has a spiritual body wholly independent of time or space, capable of transporting itself whenever and wherever the mind dictates."
"We cannot know these things as they are, in this time," remarked Yusuf. "But the day is not very far distant now, Amzi, when you and I shall explore these mysteries for ourselves."
So the talk went on. Kedar listened with interest. He thought it a curious conversation, and felt so strangely out of place that it seemed as though he were dreaming, and listening to the talk of genii.
Next morning he was in a decided fever. Then came long days of pain and nights of delirium, in which Manasseh and his two friends hovered like ministering spirits about the youth, whose wounds had healed only to give place to disease far more deadly. In those terrible nights of burning heat his parched tongue swelled so that he could scarcely swallow; he tossed in agony, now fancying himself chained to a rock unable to move, while the prophet urged him on to the heights above where the battle was raging; now imagining himself fastened near a burning furnace whose flames were fed by the bodies of those whom he had slain. He would cry out in terror, and beads of perspiration would start upon his forehead. He lived the whole war over again, and his only rest was at times when, partially conscious, he felt kindly hands placing cool bandages on his burning head, or gently fanning his face.
The time at last came when he sank into a heavy sleep, and awoke calling "Mother."
It was Manasseh who came, almost startled by the naturalness of the tone.
"I have been very ill, Manasseh?"