the promised kingdom will come to pass.  And the disciples answered, one here, one there, and then in twos and threes.  But, Master, thou knowest all these things, since it is to thee our Father has given the task of establishing his Kingdom upon earth; tell us, plague us no longer with dark questions.  We are not alone, Thaddeus cried, a rich man’s son is amongst us.  If he have come amongst us God has sent him, Jesus said, and we should have no fear of riches, since we desire them not.  This kindness heartened Joseph, who dared to ask Jesus how he might disburden himself of the wealth that would come to him at his father’s death.

As no such dilemma as Joseph’s had arisen before, all waited to hear Jesus, but his thoughts having seemingly wandered far, they all fell to argument and advised Joseph in so many different ways that he did not know to whom to accede so contradictory were all their notions of fairness; and, the babble becoming louder, it waked Jesus out of his mood, and catching Joseph’s eyes, he asked him if he whom our Father sent to establish his Kingdom on earth would not have to give his life to men for doing it.  A question that Joseph could not answer; and while he sought for the Master’s meaning the disciples began again aloud to babble and to put questions to the Master, hurriedly asking him why he thought he must die before going up to heaven.  Did not Elijah, they asked, ascend into heaven alive in his corporeal body?—­and the cloak he left with Elisha, Aristion said, might be held to be a symbol of the fleshly body.  This view was scorned, for the truth of the Scriptures could not be that the disciples inherited not the spiritual power of the prophet, but his fleshly show.  Then the fate of Judas the Gaulonite rising up in Peter’s mind, he said:  but, Master, we shall not allow thee to be slain on a cross and given as food to the birds.  The disciples raised their staves, crying, we’re with thee, Master, and the forest gave back their oaths in echoes that seemed to reach the ends of the earth; and when the echoes ceased a silence came up from the forest that shut their lips, and, panic-stricken, all would have run away if Peter had not drawn the sword which he had brought with him in case of an attack by wolves, and swore he would strike the man down that raised his hand against the Master.  To which Jesus replied that every man is born to pursue a destiny, and that he had long known that his led to Jerusalem, whereupon Peter cried out:  we’ll defend thee from thyself; for which words Jesus reproved him, saying that to try to save a man from himself were like trying to save him from the decree that he brings into the world with his blood.  And what is mine, Master?  It may be, Jesus answered, to return to thy fishing.  Whereupon Peter wept, saying:  Master, if we lose thee we’re as sheep that have lost their shepherd, a huddled, senseless flock on the hillside, for we have laid down our nets to follow thee, believing