Going with poultry to Tiberias?  Joseph said.  Not with poultry, Sir, the varlets answered.  We are not poulterers, but cockers.  Cockers!  Joseph repeated, and on reading the blank look in his face they told him they were the servants of a great Roman who had sent them in search of fighting cocks; for a great main was going to be fought that day in Tiberias.  We are his cockers, a man said (he spoke with some slight authority, the others seemed to be in his charge), and have been far in search of these birds.  He pointed to the baskets and asked Joseph if he would care to see the cocks, and as if to awaken Joseph’s curiosity he began to tell their pedigrees.  That one, he said, is a Cilician and of a breed that has won thousands of shekels, and a bird in the basket next him is a Bythinian brown-red, the victor in many a main, and the birds in the next three baskets are Cappadocian Duns, all of celebrated ancestry, for our master will have none but the finest birds; and if you happen to know of any good birds, price will not stand in the way of our purchasing them.  Joseph answered that he had not heard of any, but if he should—­You’ll not forget us, said a small meagre woman with black shining eyes in a colourless face, drab as the long desert road she had come by.  Joseph promised; and then a short thick-set man with matted hair, and sore eyes that were always fixed on the ground, opened one of the baskets and took out a long lean bird, which he held in shining fingers for Joseph’s admiration.  Listen to him, cried the woman in a high thin voice.  Listen to him, for no one can set a cock a-sparring like him.  The servants consulted among themselves in a language Joseph did not understand, and then, as if they had come to an agreement among themselves, the foreman said, approaching Joseph and cringing a little before him, that if the little master could assure them they would not be disturbed by dogs, they would like to show him the cocks.  A little exercise, the man said, would be of advantage to the birds—­to those that were not fighting that morning—­he added, and the man whom the woman nicknamed The Heeler, a nickname acquired from the dexterity with which he fitted the cock’s heels with soft leather pads, said:  you see, master, they may fight and buffet one another for a space without injury.

Joseph watched the birds advance and retire and pursue each other, and after this exhibition they were put back into their baskets and covered with hay.  So you are the Heeler?  Joseph asked.  The man grinned vacantly, and the woman answered for him.  There is none like him in this country for fixing a pair of spurs, for cutting the tail and wings and shortening the hackle and the rump feathers.  You see, young Master, the comb is cut close so that there shall be no mark for t’other bird’s bill.  And who knows but you’d like to see the spurs, Master.  And she showed him spurs of two kinds, for there are cocks that fight better with long spurs