e whispered into his horse's
ear; and calling upon his comrades to put their heels into their tired
steeds, he turned Xerxes into the great road leading to Tiberias.

But there were some Jews among the escort who shrank from entering a
pagan city. Their prejudices might be overcome with argument, but it
were simpler to turn their horses' heads to the west and then to the
north as soon as the city was passed. The detour would be a long one,
but it were shorter than argument: yet argument he did not escape from,
for as they rode through the open country behind Tiberias, some declared
that Herod was not a pure Jew; and to make their points clearer they
often reined up their horses, to the annoyance of Joseph, who could not
bring the discussion to an end without seeming indifferent to the law
and the traditions. But, happily, it had to end before long, for within
three miles of Magdala they were riding in single file down deep lanes
along whose low dykes the cactus crawled, hooking itself along. One lane
led into another. A network of deep lanes wound round Magdala, which,
judging by the number of new dwellings, seemed to have prospered since
Joseph had last seen it. Humble dwellings no doubt, Joseph said to
himself, but bread is not lacking, nor fish. Then he thought of the
wharves his father had built for the boats, and the workshops for the
making of the barrels into which the fish was packed. Magdala owed its
existence to Dan's forethought, and he had earned his right, Joseph
thought, to live in the tall house which he had built for his pleasure
in a garden amid tall acacia-trees that every breeze that blew up from
the lake set in motion.

If ever a man, Joseph thought, earned his right to a peaceable old age
amid pleasant surroundings, that man was his father; and he thought of
him returning from his counting-house to his spacious verandah, thinking
of the barrels of salt fish that he would send away the following week,
if the fishers were letting down their nets with fortunate enterprise.

CHAP. X.

A very good guessing of his father's wonts and thoughts was that of
Joseph while riding from Tiberias, for as the horsemen came up the lane
at a canter the old man was wending homeward from his counting-house,
wishing Peter and Andrew, James and John and the rest good fortune with
their nets, or else, he had begun to think, the order from Damascus
cannot----- The completed sentence would probably have run: canno