is trivial incident with
disgust. The young general, whose military cloak flaunted a purple
border, called the decurion boyishly:

"Well done, Sergius! A samnos of wine for your company to-night for
this."

The decurion saluted.

"Where did you get them?" the tribune demanded.

The shepherd who had withdrawn to the side of the road on the approach
of the column looked at the questioner with resentful eyes from which
the moisture had not vanished.

"From me!" he said.

Both the purple-wearing young general and his tribune looked at him
amusedly.

"How many killed and wounded, Sergius?" the tribune asked.

The silent and disapproving tribune, observing that the commanding
officer had not given an order to halt, brought the six hundred to,
lest they ride their general down.

"You!" the general exclaimed with his eyes on the young shepherd.

The boy looked up into the face of the Roman who sat above him on a
snow-white horse.

It was a young face, tanned by the sun of Alexandria, but bright with
an emanation of light that somehow was made tangible by the flash of
his teeth as he talked and the sparkle of his lively eyes. For a
soldier exposed to the open air and the ruffian life of the camp and
burdened with the grave task of subduing a desperate nation, he was
free of disfigurements. His brows were knitted as if to give his full
soft eyes protection and the frown, with the laughing cut of his
youthful lips, gave his face a quizzical expression that was entirely
winning. In countenance and figure he was handsome, refined and
thoroughly Roman. The little shepherd was won to him instantly.
Without knowing that the world from one border to the other had
already named this charming young Roman the Darling of Mankind, the
little shepherd, had his lips been shaped to poetry, would have called
him that.

So Joseph, the shepherd, son of Thomas, the Christian, and Titus, son
of Vespasian, Emperor of the World, looked at each other with perfect
fellowship.

"Those are sheep from Pella," Joseph said soberly, "in my care. They
were taken from me because," he paused till a more tactful statement
should suggest itself, but, lacking it, drove ahead with spirit,
"there was not more of me to stop your soldiers."

"I believe you," Titus replied heartily. "But that is the fortune of
war. Still, you Jews have a habit of refusing to accept defeat
rationally."

"I am not a Jew," Joseph explained. "I am born of Arab blood, a