having bidden a dead man rise from the grave, to the great disappointment of Joseph, who would have liked to witness this miracle (the greatest of all); seemingly it was not his lot.  Peter bade him hope!—­the great miracle might happen in Galilee, and as such a miracle would evince the truth of Jesus’ Messiah-ship even to his father, Joseph remained in Capernaum, going out in the boats with Jesus and his disciples, sailing along the shores till the people gathered in numbers sufficient for an exhortation.  As there were always many Pharisees and Sadducees among the crowds assembled to hear the Master, he did not land, but preached standing up in the bow, Peter vigilant with an oar, for priests are everywhere enemies of reformation and instigate attacks upon reformers, and those made on Jesus were often so violent that Peter had to strike out to the right and left, but he always managed to get free, and they sailed for less hostile coasts or back to the wharf at Capernaum.

It once occurred to them to try their luck with the Gadarenes, and it was in returning from their coasts one evening that Peter’s boat was caught in a great storm and that Joseph was met by one of his father’s servants as he jumped ashore.  The man had come to tell him that if he wished to see his father alive he must hasten to Magdala, and Joseph glared at him dumbfounded, for he had suspected all along that he had little or no right at all to leave his father for Jesus.  I did not know I was like this, he blurted out to himself.  And as much to silence his accusing conscience as anything else he questioned the stupid messenger, asking him if his father had seen a physician, and if the physician had held out any hopes of a recovery.  But the thin and halting account which was all the messenger could give only increased Joseph’s alarm, and it was with much difficulty that he learnt from him that the master had brought some walnuts to the parrots, and just after giving a nut to the green parrot had cried out to Tobias that a great pain had come into his head.  Joseph dug his heels into his ass’s side and cried to the messenger:  and then?  The messenger answered that the pain in the back of his father’s head had become so great that he had begun to reel about, overthrowing one of the parrots on its perch.  The parrot flew at master, thinking he had done it——­ Never mind the parrot, Joseph replied angrily, confusing the messenger, who told him that the master had entered the house on Tobias’ arm, and had sat down to supper but had eaten nothing to speak of.  None of us dared to go to bed that night, the messenger continued.  We sat up, expecting every moment somebody to come down from the room overhead to tell us that the master was dead.  The next part of the messenger’s story was like a tangled skein, and Joseph half heard and half understood that the great physician that had come from Tiberias had said that he must awaken the master out of the swoon and at any cost.  He kept