After sunset, when the Prophet had said the prayer of "Magrib," he went back to the camp. Near his tent, he saw seated the Jewess Zainab, daughter of Al-Harith, and wife of Sallam ibn Mishkam. She awaited Mohammad's coming to give him the present she had brought: a lamb spitted on a spear, and which had been roasted at a fire fed with aromatic wood from the desert. He thanked the woman, and when she had taken her leave, he invited his companions to sit down and partake of the roast. Its crisp, golden outer skin looked very tempting. The Prophet was the first to fall to, twisting off a shoulder, into which he bit and began to chew a morsel. Following his example, Bishr ibn U'l-Bara took a mouthful of meat; masticating and swallowing it. The other guests had already reached out their hands in like fashion, when the Prophet spat out the piece he was chewing and stopped them abruptly, shouting: 'Hold your hands! This shoulder hath just told me that it is poisoned!'--'By Him who is Generosity incarnate!' exclaimed Bishr, 'I thought that my mouthful had a peculiar flavour and guessed what it meant; but seeing thee chew thine, I could not spit it out, saving your reverence. If this poison should destroy thy life, what liking can remain to me for mine?' Scarcely had Bishr uttered these words than his face, overspread by a blackish hue, became distorted, and he writhed on the ground, a prey to unbearable suffering. The Prophet sent at once for the Jewess and said to her: 'Thou hast poisoned this lamb?'--'Who told thee so?'--'This!' and he showed her the fragment of shoulder he held.--'It is true,' she confessed.--'Why didst thou do this thing?'--'My father, my uncle, my husband and many of my people have suffered the sad fate thou knowest of, by thy fault. And I did think: if Mohammad is naught but a mighty monarch, I end his days and glut their vengeance and mine. If, on the contrary, he is truly a Prophet, he is in no danger, because his Allah will warn him of my purpose.' This clever answer calmed the Prophet and he was perchance on the point of pardoning the guilty woman for her abominable crime, when Bishr expired at that moment. Mohammad delivered the Jewess into the hands of the dead man's relatives who came clamouring to be avenged. Zainab was crucified and the remains of the fatal lamb were burnt. Although the Prophet spat out the perfidious piece of meat almost as soon as it passed his lips, the poison filtered through his body as far as his entrails, and he never fully recovered from its pernicious effects. Three years later, when fatally ill, Bishr's sister coming into his house to ask after his health, he told her: 'The vein of my heart was torn by the food I ate with thy brother, at Khaibar.' [Sidenote: AMRATU'L-QADA OR THE PIOUS VISITATION (_Year VII of the Hegira, A.D. 629_)]