ir several cures for scab. Another
shepherd came by and passed the remark that Jesus knew the hills like
one born among them. But neither could tell whence he came, nor did they
know if he brought the cure for scab with him, or learnt it at the
cenoby. The brotherhood has secrets that it is forbidden to tell. I be
with thee on this matter, said another shepherd, that wherever he goes,
he'll be a prize to a master, for the schooling he has been through will
stand to him.

The last of this chatter that came to Joseph's ears was that Jesus could
do as much with sheep as any man since Abraham, and--satisfied with this
knowledge--he took his leave of the shepherds, certain that Jesus must
have been among the Essenes for many years before God called to him to
leave his dogs and to follow John, whom he began to recognise as greater
than himself, but whom he was destined to supersede, as John's own
disciple, Banu, testified in the desert before Joseph's own eyes. He
remembered how Banu saw John in a vision plunging Jesus into Jordan. Of
trickery and cozenage there was none: for the men along these banks bore
witness to the baptism that Joseph would have seen for himself if he had
started a little earlier; nor could the Jesus who came to John for
baptism be other than the young shepherd whom Joseph had seen, at the
beginning of his novitiate, walking with the president in deep converse;
the president apparently trying to dissuade him from some project.
Joseph could not remember having heard anyone speak so familiarly or so
authoritatively to the president, a man some twenty years older; and he
wondered at the time how a mere shepherd from the hills could talk on an
equality, as if they were friends, with the president. The shepherd, he
now heard, was an Essene, but he lived among the hills, and Joseph
remembered the striped shirt, the sheepskin and the long stride. His
memory continued to unfold, and he recalled with singular distinctness
and pleasure the fine broad brow curving upwards--a noble arch, he said
to himself--the eyes distant as stars and the underlying sadness in his
voice oftentimes soft and low, but with a cry in it; and he remembered
how their eyes met, and it seemed to Joseph that he read in the
shepherd's eyes a look of recognition and amity.

And now, as he walked from the Jordan to the cenoby, he remembered how,
all one night after that meeting, dreams of a mutual destiny plagued
him: how he slept and was aw