olly to his yearning for the girl in the tissue of
moonbeams.

There was a quiet step on the earth at the threshold. Joseph, the
shepherd, stood there. The two looked at each other; one with inquiry
and weakness in his face; the other with good-will and reassurance.

"Boy," said the Maccabee feebly, "I have been sick."

"Friend, I am witness to that. I am your nurse," the boy replied.

After a little silence the Maccabee extended his hand. The boy took it
with a sudden flush of emotion, but feeling its weakness, refrained
from pressing it too hard, and laid it back with great care on his
patient's breast. The Maccabee looked out at the door, away from the
full eyes of his young host.

He was touched presently, and a cup of milk was silently put to his
lips. He drank and turning himself with effort fell asleep.

When he awoke again, after many hours, it was night. In the door with
his head dropped back between his shoulders gazing up at the sky
overhead, sat the boy.

"Where," the Maccabee began, "are the rest of you?"

The boy turned around quickly, and answered with all seriousness.

"I am all here."

"Did you," the Maccabee began again, after silence, "care for me
alone?"

"There has been no one here but us," the boy said, hesitating at the
symptoms of gratitude in the Maccabee's voice.

"Us?"

"You and me."

After another silence, the Maccabee laughed weakly.

"It requires two to constitute 'us' and I am, by all signs, not a
whole one!"

"But you will be in a few days," the boy declared admiringly. "You are
an excellent sick man."

The Maccabee looked at him meditatively.

"I am merely perverse," he said darkly; "I knew it would be so much
pleasure to my murderer to know that I died, duly."

The shepherd repressed his curiosity, as the best thing for his
patient's welfare, and suggested another subject rather disjointedly.

"I have been thinking," he said, "about Jerusalem. I was there once
upon a time."

"Once!" the Maccabee said. "You are old enough to attend the
Passover."

"But our people do not attend the feast. We are Christians."

The Maccabee moved so that he could look at the boy. He might have
known it, he exclaimed to himself. It was just such an extreme act of
mercy, this assuming the care of a stranger in a wilderness, as he had
ever known Christians to do in that city of irrational faiths,
Ephesus.

"Well?" he said, hoping the boy would go on and spare him an
expression