aul asked how many yards distant, he did not
answer the exact distance, but halved it, so that Paul might be
heartened and encouraged, and when the distance mentioned had been
traversed and the cave was still far away he bore with Paul's reproaches
and answered them with kindly voice: we shall soon be there, another few
steps will bring us into it, and it isn't a long valley; only a gutter,
Paul answered, the way the rains have worn through the centuries. A
strange desert, the strangest we have seen yet, and I have travelled a
thousand leagues but never seen one so melancholy. I like better the
great desert. I have lived all my life among these hills, Jesus replied,
and to my eyes they have lost their melancholy.

All thy life in these deserts, Paul replied eagerly, and his manner
softened and became almost winning. Thou'lt forgive, he said, any
abruptness there may have been in my speech, I am speaking differently
from my wont, but to-morrow I shall be in health and able to follow thee
and to listen with interest to thy tales of shepherding among these
hills of which thou must know a goodly number. My speech is improving,
isn't it? answer me. Jesus answered that he understood Paul very well;
and could tell him many stories of flocks, pillaging by robbers and
fights between brave Thracian dogs and wolves, and if such stories
interested Paul he could relate them. But here is our cave, he said,
pointing to a passage between the rocks. We must go down on our hands
and knees to enter it; and in answer to Paul, who was anxious to know
the depth of the cave, Jesus averred that he only knew the cave through
having once looked into it. The caves we know best are the vast caves
into which the shepherd can gather his flocks, trusting to his dogs to
scent the approach of a wild animal and to awaken him. Go first and I'll
follow thee, and Jesus crawled till the rocks opened above him and he
stood up in what Paul described as a bowel in the mountain; a long cave
it was, surely, twisting for miles through the darkness, and especially
evil-smelling, Paul said. Because of the bats, Jesus answered, and
looking up they saw the vermin hanging among the clefts, a sort of
hideous fruit, measuring three feet from wing to wing, Paul muttered,
and as large as rats. We shall see them drop from their roosts as the
sky darkens and flit away in search of food, Jesus said. Paul asked what
food they could find in the desert, and Jesus answered: we ar