vilah's departure that Jesus returned to the shepherds and,
stopping in front of Eliab and Bozrah, he said: I've come back, mates,
to give you my thanks for many a year of good-fellowship. So the time
has come for us to lose thee, mate, Eliab answered. We are sorry for it,
though it isn't altogether unlocked for. We were saying not many moments
ago, Bozrah interjected, that the life on the hills is no life for a man
when he has gone fifty, and thou'lt not see fifty again: no, and not by
three years, Jesus answered. It was just about fifty years that the
feeling began to come over me that I couldn't fight another winter, and
to think of Jacob, who is waiting for a flock, and he may as well have
mine during my life as wait for my death to get it. Better so, said
Eliab, whose wont it was to strike his word in whenever the speaker
paused. He did not always wait for the speaker to pause, and this trick
being known to Bozrah, he said, and by all accounts thou hast made a
true shepherd of him, passing over to him all thy knowledge. A lad of
good report, Jesus answered, who had fallen on a hard master, a thing
that has happened to all of us in our time, Bozrah interjected. He's not
the first that fell out of favour, for that his ewes hadn't given as
many lambs as they might have done. Nor was there anything of neglect in
it, but such a bit of ill luck as might run into any man or any man
might run up against. He was told, said Eliab, who could not bear anyone
to tell a story but himself, that though he were to bring the parts of
the sheep the wolf had left behind to his master he would have to seek
another master. Such severity frightens the shepherd, and the wolf
smells out the frightened shepherd, Jesus said, and he told his mates
that he had not found Jacob lacking in truthfulness nor in natural
discernment, and he asked them to give all their protection to Jacob,
who will, he said, go forth in charge of our flock to-morrow.

The shepherds said again that they were sorry to lose Jesus, and that
the hills would not seem like the hills without him, and Jesus answered
that he, too, would be lonely among the brethren reading the Scriptures.
When one is used to sheep one misses them sorely, Eliab said, there's
always something to learn from them; and he began to tell a story; but
before he had come to the end of it Jesus' thoughts took leave of the
story he was listening to, and he turned away, leaving the shepherd with
his half-f