Well, young Master, he said, we’re glad to have you back among us again. There be no place like home for us Galileans. Isn’t that so? And no fishing like that on these coasts? But, Peter, Joseph interrupted, my father tells me that thou hast laid aside thy nets—but that isn’t what I’m here to talk to thee about, he interjected suddenly, but about Jesus himself, whom I’ve been seeking for nearly two years, very nearly since I parted from you all, well nigh two years ago, isn’t it? I’ve sought him in the hills of Judea, in Moab, in the Arabian desert and all the way to Egypt and back again. It’s about two years since you went away on your travels, Master Joseph, and a great fine story there’ll be for us to listen to when our nets are down, Peter said. I’d ask you to begin it now, Master Joseph, weren’t it that the Master is waiting for us over yonder in my house. And from what Philip tells me you would have my advice about joining our community, Master Joseph. You’ve seen no doubt a good deal of the Temple at Jerusalem and know everything about the goings on there, and are with us in this—that the Lord don’t want no more fat rams and goats and bullocks, and incense is hateful in his nostrils. So I’ve heard. They be Isaiah’s words, aren’t they, young Master? But there’s no master here, only Jesus: he is Master, and if I call you “Master” it is from habit of beforetimes. But no offence intended. You always will be master for me, and I’ll be servant always in a sense, which won’t prevent us from being brothers. The Master yonder will understand and will explain it all to you better than I.... And Peter nodded his great head covered with frizzly hair. But, Peter, I am a rich man, and my father is too, and none but the poor is admitted into the Community of Jesus. That’s what affrights him, Peter—his money, Philip interjected, and I have been trying to make him understand that Jesus won’t ask him for his father’s money, he not having it to give away. I’m not so sure of that, Peter said. The Master told us a story yesterday of a steward who took his master’s money and gave it to the poor, he being frightened lest the poor, whom he hadn’t been over-good to in his lifetime, might not let him into heaven when he died. And the Master seemed to think that he did well, for he said: it is well to bank with the poor. Them were his very words. So it seems to thee, Peter, that I should take my father’s money? Joseph asked. Take your father’s money! Peter answered. We wouldn’t wrong your father out of the price of two perch, and never have done, neither myself nor John and James. Now I won’t say as much for—— We love your father, and never do we forget that when our nets were washed away it was he that gave us new ones. I am sure thou wouldst not wrong my father, Joseph answered, and he refrained from asking Peter to explain the relevancy of the story he had just told lest he should entangle him. It is better, he said to himself, to keep