he shepherd David's, would only suffer
the darkness to come at him.

"Unless I mistake," the little shepherd said at such times, "there is
more than a wound troubling this head."

Thus day in and day out the shepherd watched by the sick man who had
no medicine but the recuperative powers of his strong young body. So
there came a night when the boy, rousing from a doze into which he had
dropped, saw the sick man stretched upon his pallet motionless as he
had not been for days. The shepherd felt the forehead and the wrists
and sank again into slumber. At dawn he rose from the earth which had
been his bed throughout this time and went forth to attend his flocks,
and when he was gone, the sick man opened his eyes.

He looked up at the blackened rafters; he looked out at either door
and frowned perplexed, first at the hills, then at the valley. He
raised his head and dropped it suddenly with great amazement and much
weariness. Finally he ventured to lift a wilted and fragile hand and
looked at it. It was not white; but it was unsteady as a laurel leaf
beside a waterfall. After a moment's rest from the exertion he parted
his lips to speak, but a whisper faint as the sound of the air in the
shrubs issued from them. He listened but there was no answer. There
was the activity of birds and insects, moving leaves and bleating
sheep without, but it was all blithely indifferent to him. Finally he
extended his arms and pressing them on his pallet tried to rise, but
he could have lifted the earth as easily. Falling back and dazed with
weakness, he lay still and slept again.

When he awoke rested sufficiently to think, he recalled that he had
been twice stabbed by Julian of Ephesus by the marsh on the road to
Jerusalem. He had probably been carried to this place and nursed back
to life by the householder.

Then he remembered. In his search after cause for his cousin's attack
upon him, he readily fixed upon Julian's rage at the Maccabee's
preemption of the beautiful girl in the hills. Instantly, the disgrace
of violence committed in a quarrel between himself and his cousin over
the possession of a woman, appealed to him. And even as instantly, his
defiant heart accepted its shame and persisted in its fault. It is an
extreme of love, indeed, if no circumstance however impelling raises a
regret in the heart of a man; for he flung off with a weak gesture any
chiding of conscience against cherishing his dream, and abandoned
himself wh