, shrill and plaintive,
quavering and lamenting through the hollow night. He waited while the
troops of gray and black scuffled and bounded and trotted near to him.
Then he dropped the pipe into its place again and strode forward,
looking on the ground.

The fitful, shivery wind that rasped the hill-top, fluttered the rags
of his long mantle of Tyrian blue, torn by thorns and stained by
travel. The rich tunic of striped silk beneath it was worn thin, and
the girdle about his loins had lost all its ornaments of silver and
jewels. His curling hair hung down dishevelled under a turban of fine
linen, in which the gilt threads were frayed and tarnished; and his
shoes of soft leather were broken by the road. On his brown fingers the
places of the vanished rings were still marked in white skin. He
carried not the long staff nor the heavy nail-studded rod of the
shepherd, but a slender stick of carved cedar battered and scratched by
hard usage, and the handle, which must once have been of precious
metal, was missing.

He was a strange figure for that lonely place and that humble
occupation-a branch of faded beauty from some royal garden tossed by
rude winds into the wilderness-a pleasure craft adrift, buffeted and
broken, on rough seas.

But he seemed to have passed beyond caring. His young face was frayed
and threadbare as his garments. The splendor of the moonlight flooding
the wild world meant as little to him as the hardness of the rugged
track which he followed. He wrapped his tattered mantle closer around
him, and strode ahead, looking on the ground.

As the path dropped from the summit of the ridge toward the Valley of
Mills and passed among huge broken rocks, three men sprang at him from
the shadows. He lifted his stick, but let it fall again, and a strange
ghost of a smile twisted his face as they gripped him and threw him
down.

"You are rough beggars," he said. "Say what you want, you are welcome
to it."

"Your money, dog of a courtier," they muttered fiercely; "give us your
golden collar, Herod's hound, quick, or you die!"

"The quicker the better," he answered, closing his eyes.

The bewildered flock of sheep and goats, gathered in a silent ring,
stood at gaze while the robbers fumbled over their master.

"This is a stray dog," said one, "he has lost his collar, there is not
even the price of a mouthful of wine on him. Shall we kill him and
leave him for the vultures?" "What have the vultures done for u