oud lifts.

CHAP. VI.

A few wanderers loitered about the inn: they came from Mount Sinai, so
the innkeeper said; he mentioned that they had a camel and an ass in the
paddock; and Joseph was surprised by the harshness with which the
innkeeper rushed from him and told the wanderers that they waited in
vain.

They were strange and fierce, remote like the desert, whence they had
come; and he was afraid of them like the innkeeper, but began to pity
them when he heard that they had not tasted food for a fortnight, only a
little camel's milk. They're waiting for me to give them the rinsings,
the innkeeper said, if any should remain at the bottom of the barrel:
you see, all water has to be brought to the inn in an ox-cart. There's
no well on the hills and we sell water to those who can afford to pay
for it. Then let the man drink his fill, Joseph answered, and his wife
too. And his eyes examined the woman curiously, for he never saw so mean
a thing before: her small beady eyes were like a rat's, and her skin was
nearly as brown. Twenty years of desert wandering leave them like
mummies, he reflected; and the child, whom the mother enjoined to come
forward and to speak winningly to the rich man, though in her early
teens was as lean and brown and ugly as her mother. Marauders they
sometimes were, but now they seemed so poor that Joseph thought he could
never have seen poverty before, and took pleasure in distributing figs
amongst them. Let them not see your money when you pay me, the innkeeper
said, for half a shekel they would have my life, and many's the time
they'd have had it if Pilate, our governor, had not sent me a guard. The
twain spoke of the new procurator till Joseph mounted his mule. I'll see
that none of them follow you, the innkeeper whispered; and Joseph rode
away down the lower hills, alongside of precipices and through narrow
defiles, following the path, which debouched at last on to a shallow
valley full of loose stones and rocks. I suppose the mule knows best,
Joseph said, and he held the bridle loosely and watched the rain,
regretting that the downpour should have begun in so exposed a place,
but so convinced did the animal seem that the conduct of the journey
should be left entirely to his judgment that it was vain to ask him to
hasten his pace, and he continued to clamber down loose heaps of stones,
seeking every byway unnecessarily, Joseph could not help thinking, but
bringing his rider and hims