It seemed to Joseph that he was of a sort dead already, for he could detach himself from himself, and consider himself as indifferently as he might a blade of grass.  My life, he said, is like these bare hills, and the one thing left for me to desire is death.

A footstep aroused him from his dream.  The man whom he had seen on the hillside yonder had crossed the valley, and he began to describe the animals he had lost, before Joseph recovered from his reverie.  No, he said, I have seen no camels.  Camels might have passed him by without his seeing them, but there was no obligation on him to confide his misery to the shepherd, a rough, bearded man in a sheepskin, who thanked him and was about to go, when Joseph called after him:  if you want help to seek your camels, I’ll come with you.  Even the company of this man were better than his loneliness; and together they crossed some hills.  Why, there be my camels, as I’m alive! the camel-driver cried.  Joseph had brought him luck, for in a valley close at hand the camels were found, staring into emptiness.  Strange abstractions!  Joseph said to himself, and then to the camel-driver:  since I have found your camels, who knows but that you may tell me of one Jesus, an Essene from the cenoby on the eastern bank of the Jordan?  A shepherd of these hills? the man asked, and Joseph replied:  yes, indeed.  To which the camel-driver answered:  if I hear of him, I’ll send him a message that you are looking for him, and I’ll send you word that he has been found.  But you’ll never find him, Joseph answered.  You didn’t think you would find my camels, the driver replied; but so it fell out, and if I could only find a few more camels, or the money to buy them, I could lay down a great trade in figs between Jericho and Jerusalem; he related simply, not knowing that the man he was talking to could give him all the money he required; telling that figs ripen earlier in Jericho, especially if the trees have the advantage of high rocks behind them.

It pleased Joseph to listen to his patter:  it seemed to him that his father was talking to him, and he was plunged in such misery that he had to extricate himself somehow.  So he signed the deed that evening, and within a month a caravan laden with figs went forth and wended its way safely to Jerusalem.  Another caravan followed a few weeks after, and still larger profits were made, and these becoming known to certain thieves, the next caravan was waylaid and driven away to the coast, and the figs shipped to some foreign part or sold to unscrupulous dealers, who knew them to be stolen.  The loss was so great that Gaddi said to Joseph:  if we lose a second caravan we shall be worse off than we were when we began, and we shall lose a third and a fourth, unless the robbers be driven out of their caves.  Let us then go to the Roman governor, Pilate, and lay our case before him.  Joseph had no fault to find with Gaddi’s words, and he said:  it may be that I shall go to Pilate myself, for I am known to him through my father, who trades largely between Tiberias and Antioch with salt fish.