, Master, I cannot tell thee more than I have said; something will
befall, but what that thing may be I cannot say. Will it be in the
winter or in the spring? It will be in February or March, she said. It
was, however, before then, in January (the winter being a mild one, the
birds were already singing in the shaws), that a camel-driver came to
the house on the hillside to tell Joseph that a camel had been stolen
from them on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem during the night or in
the early morning, and with many words and movements of the hands, that
irritated Joseph, he sought to describe the valley where they pitched
their tent. Get on with thy story, Joseph said; and the man told that
they had succeeded in tracking the band, a small one, to a cave, out of
which, he said, it will be easy to smoke them if Fadus, the procurator,
will send soldiers at once, for they may go on to another cave, not
deeming it safe to remain long in the same one. Didst beg the camel
back from the robbers? Joseph asked, for he was not thinking of the
robbery, but of his meeting with Fadus. No, Master, there was no use
doing that. They would have taken our lives. But we followed them,
spying them from behind rocks all the way, and the cave having but one
entrance they can be smoked to death with a few trusses of damp straw.
But care must be taken lest our camel perish with them. If we could get
them to give up the camel first, I'm thinking--

It was a serious matter to hear that robbers had again established
themselves in the hills; and while Joseph pondered the disagreeable
tidings a vagrant breeze carried the scent of the camel-driver's
sheepskin straight into Jesus' nostrils as he came up the path with a
bundle of faggots on his shoulders. He stopped at first perplexed by the
smell and then, recognising it, he hurried forward, till he stood before
the spare frame and withered brown face of the desert wanderer.

Joseph looked on puzzled, for Jesus stood like one in ecstatic vision
and began to put questions to the camel-driver regarding the quality of
the sheep the shepherds led, asking if the rams speeded, if there were
many barren ewes in the flock, and if there was as much scab about as
formerly, questions that one shepherd might put to another, but which
seemed strangely out of keeping with a gardener's interests.

The camel-driver answered Jesus' question as well as he was able, and
then, guessing a former shepherd in the gardener