they continued to watch Jesus, trying to gather from his face what his
thoughts might be, thinking that his distant eyes might be seeking a
prediction of the coming kingdom in the sky. We might ask him if he sees
the kingdom coming this way, an apostle whispered in the ear of
another, and was forthwith silenced, for it was deemed important that
the Master should never be disturbed in his meditations, whatever they
might be.

He stood at gaze, his apostles and his disciples watching from a little
distance, recalling the day his dog Coran refused to follow him, and
seeing that the dog had something on his mind, he left his flock in
charge of the other dogs and followed Coran to the hills above the Brook
Kerith, down a little crumbling path to Elijah's cave. He found John the
Baptist, and recognising in him Elijah's inheritor--at that moment a
flutter of wings in the branches awoke him from his reverie, and seeing
his disciples about him, he asked them whose inheritor he was. Some said
Elijah, some said Jeremiah, some said Moses. As if dissatisfied with
these answers, he looked into their faces, as if he would read their
souls, and asked them to look up through the tree tops and tell him what
they could see in a certain space of sky. In fear of his mood, and lest
he might call them feeble of sight or purblind, his disciples, or many
among them, fell to disputing among themselves as to what might be
discerned by human eyes in the cloud; till John, thinking to raise
himself in the Master's sight, so it seemed to Joseph (who dared not
raise his eyes to the sky, but bent them on the earth), said that he
could see a chariot drawn by seven beasts, each having on its forehead
seven horns; the jaws of these beasts, he averred, were like those of
monkeys, and in their paws, he said, were fourteen golden candlesticks.
Andrew, being misled by the colour of the cloud which was yellow, said
that the seven beasts were like leopards; whereas Philip deemed that
the beasts were not leopards, for him they were bears; and they began to
dispute one with the other, some discerning the Father Almighty in a
chariot, describing him to be a man garmented in white; his hair is like
wool, they said. And seated beside him Matthew saw the Son of Man with
an open book on his knees. But these visions, to their great trouble,
did not seem to interest Jesus; or not sufficiently for their intention;
and to the mortification of Peter and Andrew, James and Jo