Joseph's
curiosity was unceasing and very often wearisome. Now, Joseph, his
father said, you will learn more about these things when you are older.
And why not now? he asked, and his grandmother answered that it was
change of air that he wanted and not books; and they began to speak of
the fierce summer that had taken the health out of all of them, and of
how necessary it was for a child of that age to be sent up to the hills.

Dan looked into his son's face, and Rachel seemed to be right. A thin,
wan little face, that the air of the hills will brighten, he said; and
he began at once to make arrangements for Joseph's departure for a hill
village, saying that the pastoral life of the hills would take his mind
off Samuel, Hebrew and Babylon. Rachel was doubtful if the shepherds
would absorb Joseph's mind as completely as his father thought. She
hoped, however, that they would. As soon as he hears the sound of the
pipe, his father answered. A prophecy this was, for while Joseph was
resting after the fatigue of the journey, he was awakened suddenly by a
sound he had never heard before, and one that interested him strangely.
His nurse told him that the sound he was hearing was a shepherd's pipe.
The shepherd plays and the flock follows, she said. And when may I see
the flock coming home with the shepherd? he asked. To-morrow evening,
she answered, and the time seemed to him to loiter, so eager was he to
see the flocks returning and to watch the she-goat milked.

And in the spring as his strength came back he followed the shepherds
and heard from them many stories of wolves and dogs, and from a shepherd
lad, whom he had chosen as a companion, he acquired knowledge of the
plumage and the cries and the habits of birds, and whither he was to
seek their nests: it had become his ambition to possess all the wild
birds' eggs, one that was easily satisfied till he came to the egg of
the cuckoo, which he sought in vain, hearing of it often, now here, now
there, till at last he and the shepherd lad ventured into a dangerous
country in search of it and remained there till news of their absence
reached Magdala and Dan set out in great alarm with an armed escort to
recover his son. He was very angry when he came upon him, but the
trouble he had been put to and the ransom he had had to pay were very
soon forgotten, so great was his pleasure at the strong healthy boy he
brought back with him, and whose first question to Rachel was: are ther