he had met under the cliffs abutting the lake,
to the little pathway cut in the shoulder of the hill that leads to
Capernaum. He had not recognised him as he passed, which was not
strange, so unseemly were the ragged shirt and the cloak of camel's or
goat's hair he wore over it, patched along and across, one long tatter
hanging on a loose thread. It caught in his feet, and perforce he
hitched it up as he walked, and Joseph remembered that he looked upon
the passenger as a mendicant wonder-worker on his round from village to
village. But Jesus had not gone very far when Joseph was stopped by a
memory of a face seen long ago: a pale bony olive face, lit with
brilliant eyes. It is he! he cried; and starting in pursuit and quickly
overtaking Jesus, he called his name. Jesus turned, and there was no
doubt when the men stood face to face that the shepherd Joseph had seen
in the cenoby in converse with the president, and the wandering beggar
by the lake shore, were one and the same person. Jesus asked him which
way he was walking, and he answered that all directions were the same
to him, for he was only come out for a breath of fresh air before
bed-time. But thinking he had expressed himself vulgarly, he added other
words and waited for Jesus to speak of the beauty of God's handiwork.
Jesus merely mentioned in answer that he was going to Capernaum, where
he lodged with Simon Peter. But he had not forgotten the brotherhood by
the Dead Sea, and invited Joseph to accompany him and tell him of those
whom he had left behind. We are of the same brotherhood, he said; and
then, as if noticing Joseph's embarrassment, or you are a proselyte,
maybe, who at the end of the first year retired from the order? Many do
so. Joseph did not know how to answer this question, for he had not
obtained permission from the president to seek Jesus in Egypt, and it
seemed to him that the most truthful account he could give of himself at
the cenoby was to say that he was not there long enough to consider
himself even a proselyte. He lived in the cenoby as a visitor, rather
than as one attached to the order; but how far he might consider himself
an Essene did not matter to anybody. Besides he wished to hear Jesus
talk rather than to talk about himself, so he compared his residence
with the Essenes to a clue out of which a long thread had unravelled: a
thread, he said, that led me into the desert in search of thee.

Jesus had known Banu, in the desert, and