Meanwhile the midday activity on the Roman roadway swept by the
smoldering fire and the motionless figure lying in the grass some
distance back from the highway. Along the splendid causeway the
Passover pilgrims fared, men afoot, men on camels, families and
solitary travelers; the poor, the once rich, the humble and the
haughty; figures in burnooses, gabardines, gowns and tunics; striped
and checkered woolens, linens or rags; noisy or silent, angry or sad,
hour in and hour out, until the hills were a-throb with the human
atmosphere. Time and again the sweet invitation of the rare grass
along the marsh invited the way-weary to halt to tie a sandal, to bind
up a wound, to eat a crust spread with curds or simply to rest. No one
approached the silent man who had fallen beside a dying fire. They
were tired enough to refrain from disturbing a man who slept. So,
though they looked at him from where they sat and two or three asked
each other if he were asleep or merely weary, he was left alone. One
by one they who halted took up their journey again and the figure in
the grass lay still.
Finally near the noon hour there came from the summit of a hill
overhanging the road, a high, wild, youthful yell that cut with
startling distinctness through the dead level of human communication
on the highway. Each of the travelers below looked up to see a young
shepherd in sheepskins with long-blowing stiff crinkled locks flying
back from a dusky face, with eyes soft and shining as those of some
wild thing. Around him eddied a mob of sheep as wild as he, and a
Natolian dog raced hither and thither in a cloud of dust, rounding the
edge of the flock and shaping it to the advance of the young faun that
mastered it.
"Sheep! by the prophets!" one of the sedate Jews exclaimed.
"The only flock in existence in Judea, I venture!" his companion
declared.
"And so hopelessly doomed to Roman possession that it can not be
called in existence."
"Heigh! Hello! Young David!" one of the younger men called up to the
shepherd. "Does Titus pay you for minding his mutton?"
"Salute, neighbors!" another shouted. "Here is the Roman commissary!"
"Ill-fathered son of an Ishmaelite!" a Tyrian said to this jester.
"That you should make sport of Judea's humiliation!"
The shepherd who had paused amid his whirlpool of sheep wisely held
his peace. There was a division of sentiment here that were better not
aggravated. He halted long enough for the road to clear below him and
then descended into the valley and crossed to the low meadow on the
opposite side.
His scamper of sheep flocked into the sedge, parting around the
prostrate figure by a circle of coals now dead, and plunged into the
pasture. The boy inspected the earth and shook his head. It was too
wet for a long stay, inviting as it seemed. But here his flock might
pasture for a day without injury.