Let an escort be called together at once, he cried, and an hour later he was on the back of a speedy dromedary riding through the night, his mind whirling with questions which he did not put to the messenger, knowing he could not answer any of them.  And they rode on through that night and next day, stopping but once to rest themselves and their animals—­six hours’ rest was all he allowed himself or them.  Six hours’ rest for them, for him not an hour, so full was his mind with questions.  He rode on, drinking a little, but eating nothing, thinking how his father’s life might be saved, of that and nothing else.  Were they feeding him with milk every ten minutes?—­he could not trust nurses, nobody but himself.  Were they shouting in his ear, keeping him awake, as it were, stimulating his consciousness at wane?

Once, and only once, while attending on his father did Joseph remember that if his father died he would be free to follow Jesus:  a shameful thought that he shook out of his mind quickly, praying the while upon his knees by the bedside that he might not desire his father’s death.  As the thought did not come again, he assumed that his prayer was granted, and when he returned to Jerusalem a month later (the new year springing up all about him), immersed in a sort of sad happiness, thanking God, who had restored his father to health (Joseph had left Dan looking as if he would live to a hundred), a strange new thought came into his mind and took possession of it:  the promise given his father only bound him during his father’s lifetime; at his father’s death he would be free to follow Jesus; but the dead hold us more tightly than the living, and he feared that his life would be always in his father’s keeping.

He was about his father’s business in the counting-house; his father seemed to direct every transaction, and, ashamed of his weakness, he refrained from giving an order till he heard, or thought he heard, his father’s voice speaking through him, and when he returned to his dwelling-house, over against the desert, it often seemed to him that if he were to raise his eyes from the ashes in which some olive roots were burning he would see his father, and as plain as if he were before his eyes in the flesh.  But my father isn’t dead, so what is the meaning of this dreaming? he cried one evening; and, starting out of his chair, he stood listening to the gusts whirling through the hills with so melancholy a sound that Joseph could not dismiss the thought that the moment was fateful.  His father was dying ... something was befalling, or it might be that Jesus was at the door asking for him.  The door opened, and he uttered a cry:  what is it?  Nicodemus, the servant answered, has come to see you, Sir.  And he waited for his order to bid the visitor to enter or depart.