ep-pelts with a cotton abas, which one of the Galileans had
left, over him. At one of these doors, sitting sidewise, so that he
could watch in or out, sat Joseph.

All night the man on the sheepskins spoke to the blackened thatch
above him of the siege of Jerusalem and the treachery of Julian of
Ephesus. He read letters from Costobarus and instructed Aquila over
and over again. Then he tossed a coin and spent hours counting the
hairs in the long locks that fell from the shining head of the moon
down upon his breast, at midnight.

At times the boy, with the exquisite beauty of sleep on his heavy
lids, would creep over from his vigil at the door and lay his cool
hand on the sick man's forehead. And the sick man would speak in a low
controlled voice, saying:

"Naaman being a leper, my friend, why was not the law fulfilled
against him?"

But the soothing influence of that touch did not endure. Again, he
took census of the fighting-men of Judea, by the Roman statistics
which he had from the decurion, and searched through his tunic for his
wallet to write down the result. Failing to find it, he raised himself
to shout for Julian to return his property.

Again the cool hands would stroke the fevered forehead and the sick
man would say:

"Good my Lord, they fetched snow from the mountains to cool this
wine."

But how white the hands of that fair girl in the hills! Why, these
hands beside hers were as satyrs' hooves to anemones! Her lashes were
so long, and he knew that her lips were as cool as the heart of a
melon; but that husband of hers knew better than he!

And he, grandson of the just Maccabee, allied by marriage to the noble
line of Costobarus through his daughter, Laodice, the bride with the
greatest dowry in Judea, had staked his soul on the toss of a coin and
had lost it!

At this the shepherd boy straightened himself and gave attention.

But he was wholly lost, the sick man would go on, rolling his head
from side to side; he could not join Laodice because he had loved a
woman of the wayside and could not cast out that love; he was not a
Jew because he had rather linger with this strange beauty in the hills
than hasten on the rescue of Jerusalem; he had not apostatized, though
he was as wholly lost as if he had done so; he hated the heathen and
would not be one of them. He would abide in the wilderness and perish,
if this young spirit that abode by his side, with a face like
Michael's and a form so like t