Many other animadversions Joseph remembered among the multitude, and he recalled them one by one, pondering over each till one of the monkeys sprang into his arms and snatched some flowers out of his hand and hobbled away shrieking, awaking Dan, who had been dozing, and who, seeing whence the shrieking came, closed his eyes again.  While his father slept Joseph remembered that Peter, John and James stood by the Master throughout the dissidence.  But what answer will they give, Joseph asked himself, when they are questioned as to what the Master meant when he said that they must drink his blood and eat his flesh?  What answer will they make when the people question them in the different countries?—­for they are to go to every part of the world, carrying the joyful tidings.  It seemed to Joseph that the apostles would be able to make plain these hard sayings even less well than he, and he could not make plain to anybody what the Master had meant, and still less would he be able to convince others that the Master had said well that a man must leave his father though he were dying.  He said that he should leave his father unburied, the dead not needing our care, for they are the living ones, and the hyenas and crows would find to eat only that which had always been dead.  Of course if the old world were going out and the new coming in, it mattered very little what happened within the next twenty-four hours.  But was the new world as near as that?  He wondered!  It might be nearer still without his being able to leave his father to die among strangers, and a feeling rose up within him that he knew he would never be able to subdue though he were to gain an eternity of happiness by subduing it; and, pursuing this thread of thought, he came to the conclusion that he was a very weak creature, neither sufficiently enamoured of this world nor of the next; so he supposed Jesus was right to discard him, for, as he knew himself, he would be an insufficient apostle, just as he was an insufficient son.  But his father did not think him a bad son.  He raised his eyes, and, finding his father’s eyes upon him, he remembered that he had left him because he wished to see the world, to go to Jerusalem, to live with the Essenes, to go to Egypt; and that he had remained away for nearly two years, and had returned to settle a business matter between himself and his father.  Therefore it was not love of his father but a business matter that brought him back from Egypt; and now he was going to leave his father again, though he knew that his father wished him to marry some lusty girl, who would bear healthy children.

If he were a good son he would take a maid to bed.  But that he couldn’t do!  I am afraid, he said, speaking suddenly out of his thoughts, I’m not the son you deserve, Father.  I’m not a bad son, but I’m not the son God should have given you.  Thou shouldst not say that, Joseph, for we have loved each other dearly.  It is true that I hoped to see little children about me, and