At last, to break the silence that the brook rumpled without breaking, Jesus asked if a wayfarer never knocked at the door of the cenoby after dark asking for bread and board.  None knows the path well enough to keep to it after dark, Saddoc said; though the moon be high and bright the shadows disguise the path yonder.  The path is always in darkness where it bends round the rocks, and the wayfarer would miss his footing and fall over into the abyss, even though he were a shepherd.  Thyself wouldst miss it.  Saddoc speaks well; none can follow the path, Manahem said, and fortunately, else we should have all the vagrants of the country knocking at our door.

We shall have one to-night—­vagrant or prophet, Jesus said, and asked his brethren to look yonder; for it seemed to him that a man had just come out of the shadow of an overhanging rock.  Manahem could see nobody, for, he said, none could find the way in the darkness, and if it be a demon, he continued, and fall, it will not harm him:  the devil will hold him up lest he dash himself at the bottom of the ravine.  But if it be a man of flesh and blood like ourselves he will topple over yon rock, and Manahem pointed to a spot, and they waited, expecting to see the shadow or the man they were watching disappear, but the man or the shadow kept close to the cliffs, avoiding what seemed to be the path so skilfully that Saddoc and Manahem said he must know the way.  He will reach the bridge safely, cried Saddoc, and we shall have to open our doors to him.  Now he is crossing the bridge, and now he begins the ascent.  Let us pray that he may miss the path through the terraces.  But would you have him miss it, Saddoc, Jesus asked, for the sake of thy rest?  He shall have my mattress; I’ll sleep on this bench in the window under the sky, and shall be better there:  a roof is not my use nor wont.  But who, said Saddoc, can he be?—­for certainly the man, if he be not an evil spirit, is coming to ask for shelter for the night; and if he be not a demon he may be a prophet or robber:  once more the hills are filled with robbers.  Or it may be, Jesus said, the preacher of whom Jacob spoke to me this evening; he came up from the Jordan with a story of a preacher that the multitude would not listen to and sought to drown in the river, and our future shepherd told me how the rabble had followed him over the hills with the intent to kill him.  Some great and terrible heresy he must be preaching to stir them like that, Manahem said, and he asked if the shepherd had brought news of the prophet’s escape or death.  Jesus answered that the shepherd thought the prophet had escaped into a cave, for he saw the crowd dispersing, going home like dogs from a hunt when they have lost their prey.  If so, he has been lying by in the cave.  Who can he be?  Saddoc asked.  Only a shepherd could have kept to the path.  Now he sees us ... and methinks he is no shepherd, but a robber.