Titus thrust his helmet back from his full front of intensely black
curls and wiped his forehead.
"The sun is hot in these hills," he said disjointedly to the tribune
he had called Carus, "and the wind is cold. Uncomfortable climate."
Carus said nothing.
"Is it not?" Titus demanded irritably.
"Very," Carus observed hastily.
The little shepherd stood in the road and the six hundred were silent.
"Well," said Titus with a tone of finality, "you never remember the
wrongs the strong man endured--wrongs that the weak man did him
because of his weakness."
"It never hurts the strong man," Joseph said softly, "to give the weak
one another chance."
Titus closed his lips at that, and the tribune who had smiled
sarcastically looked with sudden intent at Carus. Carus silently moved
his horse to the sarcastic tribune's side with such threatening
expression on his face that the other discreetly held his peace.
"Perhaps," Titus said thoughtfully, but the boy failed to see more in
that word than the simple expression. In his search for some further
plea that would give him his sheep again, the presence of the young
Roman appealed to him with hope. Surely one so young and laughing, so
ready to stop an army to argue with a child, could not be beyond reach
of persuasion. With the simple frankness so innocent of guile as to
make charming that which upon other lips would have been the broadest
insincerity, he put that moment's thought into words.
"I thought," he said slowly, "because your horse is so white and your
dress so golden and your face so beautiful that I would have but to
ask--and I would have my sheep again."
Titus looked at him, not with the idea that his compliment was
effective, but with the thought that the boy was yet too young to have
lost faith in attractive things; that another than himself would have
to teach the shepherd that lesson in disappointment.
"Have you examined these sheep for disease, Sergius?" he demanded,
with a show of severity. "I never saw a flock in this country that was
not full of peril for the cavalry."
Sergius, wisely catching excuse in this demand, saluted.
"I did not," he replied.
"So? Well, do it hereafter. Go stop those legionaries and turn loose
that flock. We lost five hundred horse in Cæsarea for just such
negligence."
Joseph flung up his head, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks aglow, his
whole figure alive with a gratitude so potent that it was painful.
Titus, with the deep tide of a blush crawling over his forehead,
scowled down at this joy.
"Look well," he continued severely to Sergius, "and if they are
healthy--"
But Joseph laughed and stepped out of the young general's path.