"Can you not speak, Yusuf?" asked Mohammed. "Have you no word to say to all this?" "It is all true, O Mohammed," replied Yusuf, quietly. "It is true that in my youthful days I was a priest at Guebre altars. Now, I am not Yusuf the Magian priest, but Yusuf the Christian, and a humble follower of our Most High God and his Son Jesus." "Dare you thus proclaim yourself a Christian to my very face?" exclaimed Mohammed. "Magian or Christian, ye are all alike enemies. Off with him! Do with him as you will, Uzza,--yet," relenting, "I commend him to your mercy." He turned abruptly and left the apartment. Yusuf was immediately taken and thrown into a close, dark room. He was still bound hand and foot. The little Jew entered, and sat down with his head on one side. [Illustration: "He knows that Yusuf's hands reek with blood," said Uzza.--See page 58.] "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.