Again the cool hands would stroke the fevered forehead and the sick
man would say: "Good my Lord, they fetched snow from the mountains to cool this
wine."
But how white the hands of that fair girl in the hills! Why, these
hands beside hers were as satyrs' hooves to anemones! Her lashes were
so long, and he knew that her lips were as cool as the heart of a
melon; but that husband of hers knew better than he!
And he, grandson of the just Maccabee, allied by marriage to the noble
line of Costobarus through his daughter, Laodice, the bride with the
greatest dowry in Judea, had staked his soul on the toss of a coin and
had lost it!
At this the shepherd boy straightened himself and gave attention.
But he was wholly lost, the sick man would go on, rolling his head
from side to side; he could not join Laodice because he had loved a
woman of the wayside and could not cast out that love; he was not a
Jew because he had rather linger with this strange beauty in the hills
than hasten on the rescue of Jerusalem; he had not apostatized, though
he was as wholly lost as if he had done so; he hated the heathen and
would not be one of them. He would abide in the wilderness and perish,
if this young spirit that abode by his side, with a face like
Michael's and a form so like the shepherd David's, would only suffer
the darkness to come at him.
"Unless I mistake," the little shepherd said at such times, "there is
more than a wound troubling this head."
Thus day in and day out the shepherd watched by the sick man who had
no medicine but the recuperative powers of his strong young body. So
there came a night when the boy, rousing from a doze into which he had
dropped, saw the sick man stretched upon his pallet motionless as he
had not been for days. The shepherd felt the forehead and the wrists
and sank again into slumber. At dawn he rose from the earth which had
been his bed throughout this time and went forth to attend his flocks,
and when he was gone, the sick man opened his eyes.
He looked up at the blackened rafters; he looked out at either door
and frowned perplexed, first at the hills, then at the valley. He
raised his head and dropped it suddenly with great amazement and much
weariness. Finally he ventured to lift a wilted and fragile hand and
looked at it. It was not white; but it was unsteady as a laurel leaf
beside a waterfall. After a moment's rest from the exertion he parted
his lips to speak, but a whisper faint as the sound of the air in the
shrubs issued from them. He listened but there was no answer. There
was the activity of birds and insects, moving leaves and bleating
sheep without, but it was all blithely indifferent to him. Finally he
extended his arms and pressing them on his pallet tried to rise, but
he could have lifted the earth as easily. Falling back and dazed with
weakness, he lay still and slept again.