clouded and rain comes, we can read them indoors.  If the day be clouded, Azariah replied smiling.  But was not thy life dedicated to Samuel?  Thou hast forgotten him.  But the world is God’s world.  Joseph answered that he had forgotten his vow, and all that evening, in spite of Azariah’s gentleness with him, he was pursued by the memory of the sin he had committed.  In Samuel’s own city he had broken his vow!  And Azariah heard the boy blubbering in the darkness that night.

CHAP.  III.

He should not have interrupted the manifestations of joy at his return with:  when may I go to Arimathea again?  And his second question was hardly less indiscreet:  why did we leave Arimathea?  His father answered:  because it suited us to do so; and Joseph withdrew to Rachel who was never gruff with him.  But despite her bias in favour of all he said and did she reproved him, saying that he should not ask as soon as he returned home when he was going away again.  I am glad in a way, Granny, but there’s no forest here.  Dan left the room, and the boy would tell no more but burst into tears, asking what he had done to make Father so angry.  Rachel could not tell him with safety, and Joseph, thinking that perhaps something unpleasant had happened to his father in the forest (a wolf may have bitten him there), spoke of the high rock on the next occasion and of the story of Jonathan and David that Azariah had read to him.  You will ask him to come here one night, Father, and translate it to you?  Promise me that you will.  But I can read Hebrew, Dan replied, and there is no reason for those wondering eyes.  Thy Granny will tell thee.  But, Father—­Joseph stopped suddenly.  It had come into his mind to ask his father how it was that he had never read the story of Jonathan and David to him, but his interest in the matter dying suddenly, he said:  to-morrow I begin my lessons, and Azariah tells me that I must have a copy of the Scriptures for my very own use.  Now where are thy thoughts?  In a barrel of salt fish?  Father, do listen.  I’d like to learn Hebrew from bottom to top and from top to bottom and then sideways, so as to put the Scribes in Jerusalem to shame when you send me thither for the Feast of the Passover.  And thou’lt mind that my Scriptures be made by the best Scribe in Galilee and on the best parchment, promise me, Father!

Dan promised his son that no finer manuscript should be procurable in Galilee.  But the making of this magnificent copy would delay for many months Joseph’s instruction in Hebrew, and Joseph was so impatient to begin that he lay awake that night and in the morning ransacked his father’s rooms, laying hands on some quires of his father’s Scriptures; and no sooner out of the house than a great fear fell upon him that he might be robbed:  the quires were hidden in his vest suddenly and he walked on in confidence, also in a great seriousness, going his way melancholy as a camel, his head turned from the many temptations that the way offered to him—­the flower in the cactus hedge was one.  He passed it without picking it, and further on he allowed a strange crawling insect to go by without molestation, and feeling his mood to be exceptional he fell to thinking that his granny would laugh, were she to see him.