“The dancer was Tamar.  She glistened like the snow on Lebanon, and the redness of her was ruddier than a pomegranate, and her dancing was like the coiling of white serpents.  When the dance was ended her attendants threw a veil of gauze over her and she lay among her cushions, half covered with flowers, at the feet of the king.

“Through the sound of clapping hands and shouting, two slaves led me behind the couch of Herod.  His eyes narrowed as they fell upon me.  I told him the message of Caesar, making it soft, as if it were a word that suffered him to catch his prey.  He stroked his beard softly and his look fell on Tamar.  ‘I have caught it,’ he murmured; ’by all the gods, I have always caught it.  And my dear son, Antipater, is coming home of his own will.  I have lured him, he is mine.’

“Then a look of madness crossed his face and he sprang up, with frothing lips, and struck at me.  ‘What is this,’ he cried, ’a spy, a servant of my false son, a traitor in my banquet-hall!  Who are you?’ I knelt before him, protesting that he must know me; that I was his friend, his messenger; that I had left all my goods in his hands; that the girl who had danced for him was mine.  At this his face changed again and he fell back on his couch, shaken with horrible laughter.  ‘Yours!’ he cried, ’when was she yours?  What is yours?  I know you now, poor madman.  You are Ammiel, a crazy shepherd from Galilee, who troubled us some time since.  Take him away, slaves.  He has twenty sheep and twenty goats among my flocks at the foot of the mountain.  See to it that he gets them, and drive him away.’

“I fought against the slaves with my bare hands, but they held me.  I called to Tamar, begging her to have pity on me, to speak for me, to come with me.  She looked up with her eyes like doves behind her veil, but there was no knowledge of me in them.  She laughed lazily, as if it were a poor comedy, and flung a broken rose-branch in my face.  Then the silver cord was loosened within me, and my heart went out, and I struggled no more.  There was nothing in it.

“Afterward I found myself on the road with this flock.  I led them past Hebron into the south country, and so by the Vale of Eshcol, and over many hills beyond the Pools of Solomon, until my feet brought me to your fire.  Here I rest on the way to nowhere.”

He sat silent, and the four shepherds looked at him with amazement.

“It is a bitter tale,” said Shama, “and you are a great sinner.”

“I should be a fool not to know that,” answered the sad shepherd, “but the knowledge does me no good.”

“You must repent,” said Nathan, the youngest shepherd, in a friendly voice.

“How can a man repent,” answered the sad shepherd, “unless he has hope?  But I am sorry for everything, and most of all for living.”

“Would you not live to kill the fox Herod?” cried Jotham fiercely.

“Why should I let him out of the trap,” answered the sad shepherd.  “Is he not dying more slowly than I could kill him?”