with the intent of escaping
from their cries and faces, till, unable to walk farther, he stopped,
and, looking round, saw the tired sheep, their eyes mutely asking him
why he had come so far, passing by so much good herbage without halting.
Poor sheep, he said, I had forgotten you, but there is yet an hour of
light before folding-time. Go, seek the herbage among the rocks. My
dogs, too, are tired, he added, and want water, and when he had given
them some to drink he sat down, hoping that the crucified might not
return to his eyes and ears. But he need not have hoped: he was too
tired to think of what he had seen and heard, and sat in peace watching
the sunset till, as in a vision, a man in a garden, in an agony of
doubt, appeared to him. He was betrayed by a disciple and taken before
the priests and afterwards before Pilate, who ordered him to be scourged
and crucified, and beneath his cross the multitude passed, wagging their
heads, inviting him to descend if he could detach himself from the
nails. A veil fell and when it was lifted Joseph was bending over him,
and soon after was carrying him to his house. The people of that time
rose up before him: Esora, Matred, and the camel-driver, the scent of
whose sheepskin had led him back to his sheep, and he had given himself
to their service with profit to himself, for it had kept his thoughts
from straying backwards or forwards, fixing them in the present. He had
lived in the ever-fleeting present for many years--how many? The
question awoke him from his reverie, and he sat wondering how it was he
could think so quietly of things that he had put out of his mind
instinctively, till he seemed to himself to be a man detached as much
from hope as from regret. It was through such strict rule that I managed
to live through the years behind me, he said; I felt that I must never
look back, but in a moment of great physical fatigue the past returned,
and it lies before me now, the sting taken out of it, like the evening
sky in tranquil waters. Even the memory that I once believed myself to
be the Messiah promised to the Jews ceases to hurt; what we deem
mistakes are part and parcel of some great design. Nothing befalls but
by the will of God. My mistakes! why do I speak of them as mistakes, for
like all else they were from the beginning of time, and still are and
will be till the end of time, in the mind of God. His thoughts continued
to unroll, it was not long before he felt himself