"This," said Amzi, pointing to the spring, "is said to be the well which gushed up to give drink to our forefather Ishmael and Hagar his mother, when they had gone into the wilderness to die."
Yusuf sighed heavily. Such empty ceremony had no longer any attraction for him, and he turned his eyes towards the mountain Abu Kubays, towering dark and gloomy above the town, its black crest touched with a silvery radiance by the light of the stars shining brilliantly above.
Was this, then, the Caaba? Was this what he had fondly hoped would fill his heart's longing? Was there any food in this empty ceremonial for a hungering soul? Why, oh why did the truth ever elude him, flitting like an ignis-fatuus with phantom light through a dark and blackened wilderness!
Amzi was talking to someone in the crowd, and Yusuf passed slowly out and11 bent his way down a silent and deserted street. No one was in sight except a very young girl, almost a child, who was gliding quickly on in the shadows. Once or twice she seemed to stagger, then she fell. Yusuf hurried to her, and turned her face to the starlight. Even in that dim light he could see that it was contorted with pain. Yusuf heard the murmur of voices in a low building close at hand, and, without waiting to knock, he lifted the girl in his arms, opened the door, and passed in.
CHAPTER V.
NATHAN THE JEW.
"I shall be content, whatever happens, for what God chooses must be better than what I can choose."—Epictetus.
The same evening on which Yusuf visited the temple, a woman and her two children sat in a dingy little room with an earthen floor, in one of the most dilapidated streets of Mecca. The woman's face bore traces of want and suffering, yet there was a calm dignity and hopefulness in her countenance, and her voice was not despairing. She sat upon a bundle of rushes placed on the floor. No lamp lighted the apartment, but through an opening in the wall the soft starlight shone upon the bands of hair that fell in little braids over her forehead. Her two beautiful children were beside her, the girl with her arm about her mother, and the boy's head on her lap.
"Will we have only hard cake for breakfast, mother, and to-morrow my birthday, too?" he was saying.