seeking its food, Azariah answered:  snakes after mice, vultures after carrion.  This way, Joseph—­yonder we may rest awhile, but we must be careful not to sit upon a snake; that knoll yonder is free from vermin, for the trees that grow about it are fir-trees and snakes do not like any place where they can easily be detected.  And they sat on the fibrous ground and looked up into the darkness of the withered pines—­withered everywhere except in the topmost branches that alone caught the light.  A sad place to sit in, Joseph said.  Don’t you feel the sadness, Sir?  Azariah answered that he did.  But it is preferable to snake-bites, he added.  At that moment slowly flapping wings were heard overhead.  It is the vulture returning, Azariah whispered to Joseph, and he is bringing a comrade back to dinner.  To a very smelly dinner, Joseph rejoined.  The breeze had veered suddenly and they found themselves again in the smell of carrion.

We must go on farther, Azariah said, and after passing into many quiet hollows and ascending many crests the path to which they had remained faithful debouched at last on broken ground with the tail end of the forest straggling up the opposite hillside in groups and single trees.  I know where we are now, Joseph cried.  Do you not remember, Sir—­Joseph’s explanation was cut short by the sight of some shepherds sitting at their midday meal, and hunger falling suddenly upon Azariah and Joseph, both began to regret they had not brought food with them.  But Azariah had some shekels tied in his garment, and for one of these pieces of silver the shepherds were glad to share their bread and figs with them and to draw milk for them from one of the she-goats.  From which shall I draw milk? the shepherd asked his mate, and the mate answered:  White-nose looks as if her udder is paining her.  She lost her kid yesterday.  He mentioned two others:  Speckled and Long-ears.  Whichever would like her milk drawn off will answer to thy call, the shepherd answered, and the goat came running to him as if glad to hear her name.  White-nose, isn’t it?  Joseph asked, and he gathered a branch for her, and while she nibbled he watched the milk drawn off and drank it foaming and warm from the jug, believing it to be the sweetest he had ever drunk, though he had often drunk goat’s milk before.  Azariah, too, vowed that he had never drunk better milk and persuaded the shepherds into discourse of their trade, learning much thereby, for these men knew everything that men may know about flocks, having been engaged in leading them from pasture to pasture all their lives and their fathers before them.