the cross better than thou.  Take courage and bear thy pain.  I was not a robber because I wished it, my house was set on fire as many another to obtain recruits.  Yon shepherd is no better than I. Why am I on the cross and not he?  His turn may come, who knows, though he stands so happy among his sheep.  To-night he will sleep in a cool cavern, but I shall linger in pain.  Give me drink and I will tell thee where the money we have robbed is hidden.  The money may not be in the cave, and if it be we might not be able to find it, the soldier answered; and the crucified cried down to him that he could make plain the spot.  The soldier was not, however, to be bribed, and they told the crucified that the procurator was coming out to visit the crosses on the morrow, and would be disappointed if he found dead men upon them instead of dying men.  Shepherd, the soldiers will not help us, canst thou not help us?  Happy shepherd, that will sleep to-night amongst thy sheep.  Come by night and give us poison when these soldiers are asleep.  We will reward thee.  Lift not thy hand against Roman justice, the soldier said to Jesus, lest thou takest his place on the cross.  Such are our orders.

Jesus hurried away through the hills, pursued by memories of the crucified robbers, and he went on and on, with the intent of escaping from their cries and faces, till, unable to walk farther, he stopped, and, looking round, saw the tired sheep, their eyes mutely asking him why he had come so far, passing by so much good herbage without halting.  Poor sheep, he said, I had forgotten you, but there is yet an hour of light before folding-time.  Go, seek the herbage among the rocks.  My dogs, too, are tired, he added, and want water, and when he had given them some to drink he sat down, hoping that the crucified might not return to his eyes and ears.  But he need not have hoped:  he was too tired to think of what he had seen and heard, and sat in peace watching the sunset till, as in a vision, a man in a garden, in an agony of doubt, appeared to him.  He was betrayed by a disciple and taken before the priests and afterwards before Pilate, who ordered him to be scourged and crucified, and beneath his cross the multitude passed, wagging their heads, inviting him to descend if he could detach himself from the nails.  A veil fell and when it was lifted Joseph was bending over him, and soon after was carrying him to his house.  The people of that time rose up before him:  Esora, Matred, and the camel-driver, the scent of whose sheepskin had led him back to his sheep, and he had given himself to their service with profit to himself, for it had kept his thoughts from straying backwards or forwards, fixing them in the present.  He had lived in the ever-fleeting present for many years—­how many?  The question awoke him from his reverie, and he sat wondering how it was he could think so quietly of things that he had put out of his mind instinctively, till he seemed to himself to be a man