The City of Delight

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.