and in mine while we sat on the balcony last night taking the air.  Hazael had spoken his fear that the change from the hills to this dwelling would prove irksome to me at first, and our talk turned upon the life I have led since boyhood.  Our president seemed to think that the better life is to live under the sky and the sure way to happiness is in solitude:  he had fallen to admiration of my life spent among the hills, and had spoken to me of the long journeys he used to undertake in his youth over Palestine, seeking for young men in whom he foresaw the making of good Essenes; many of you here are his discoveries, myself certainly.  We indulged in recollection, and listening to him my thoughts were back in Nazareth, and I waited for him to tell me how one night he met my father, Joseph the carpenter, returning home after his day’s work, and seeing in him a native of the district, he addressed himself to him and begged my father to point out the road to Nazareth.  My father answered:  I am going thither, thou canst not do better than follow me.  So the two fared on together, talking of a lodging for the night, my father fearing that no house would be open to a stranger, which was the truth.  They knocked at many, but received only threats that the dogs would be turned upon them if they did not hasten away.  My father said:  never shall it be rumoured in Nazareth that a stranger was turned away and had to sleep in the streets.  Thou shalt have my son’s bed, and taking Hazael by the hand my father urged him and forced him into our house.  Thou shalt sleep in my house, my father said, and shook me out of my sleep, saying, Jesus, thy bed is wanted for a stranger, and to this day I remember standing in my smock before Hazael, my eyes dazed with sleep.

Next day Hazael was teaching me; and it pleasing him to see in me the making of a good Essene, and my father being willing that I should go (a good carpenter he did not see in me), he took me away with him through Samaria into Jerusalem, and we struck across the desert, descending the hills into the plain of Jericho, and crossed the Jordan.

After a year’s probationship I was admitted into the order of the Essenes and was given choice of a trade, and it was put forth that I should follow the trade of my father or work amid the fig-trees along our terraces, but my imagination being stirred by the sight of the shepherds among the hills, I said, let me be one.  And for fifteen years I led my flock, content to see it prosper under my care, until one day, spying two wolves scratching where I knew there was a cave, an empty one I thought, the hermit having been taken by wolves not long before, I couched my spear and went forward; at sight of me and my dogs the wolves fled, as I expected they would, and the hermit that had come to the cave overnight came out, and after thanking me for driving off the wolves asked me if I could guide him to a spring of pure water.  Thou’rt not far from one, I said, for the cave