From the low-growing limbs of a couple of gnarly cedars, old Momus had stretched the sheepskins which Joseph, the shepherd, had given them.  Three sides of the shelter were protected thus, and the fourth side opened down-hill, with a low fire screening them from the mountain wind.  Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her servant, sat Laodice.  She had raised her veil and its misty texture flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face in cold vapor.  In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee’s eyes, more than ever lovely.  He was angry with the hieratic banishment that sent her out to subsist by the roadside for seven days in early spring; angry with the harsh inhospitality of the hills; and angrier that he could not change it all.  He looked at the old mute to see that he was carefully putting away the remnants of a meal of durra bread and curds.  The primitive gallantry of the original man stirred in the Maccabee.  He had come unseen; with silent step he departed.

A little later he stepped boldly into the circle of light from their camp-fire.  To Laodice, in her lowly position, he seemed superhumanly big and splendid.  Without mantle or any of the accessories that would show preparation against the cold, his bare arms and limbs and dark face, tanned, hardy and resolute, seemed to be those of a strong aborigine, sturdy friend of all of nature’s rougher moods.

He did not look at Momus, who got up as quickly as he might at the intrusion of the big stranger.  His dark eyes rested on Laodice, who sat transfixed with her sudden recognition of the visitor.

He held in one hand a brace of fowls, in the other a skin of wine.

When he spoke the polish of the Ephesian andronitis in his voice and manner destroyed the primitive illusion.

“Lady, I heard in the synagogue at Emmaus to-day the exclusion that is laid upon you for seven days.  This is a hungry country and no man should waste food.  I shall enter Jerusalem to-morrow by daybreak; we, my companion and I, have no further use for these.  They are Milesian ducks, fattened on nuts.  And this is Falernian—­Roman.  I pray you, allow me to leave them with your servant with my obeisances.”

Without waiting for her reply the Maccabee passed fowls and skin into the hands of Momus who stood near.

“Sir,” she answered unreadily, with her small hands gripping each other before her and her eyes veiled, “I thank you.  It was not the least of my anxieties how we should provide ourselves with food under prohibition and in a country perilous with war.  You have made to-morrow easy for us.  I thank you.”

“To-morrow; yes,” he argued, seizing upon a discussion for an excuse to remain, “but the next day, and the next five days, what shall you do?”

“Perchance,” she said gravely, “God will send us another stranger of a generous heart, with more than he needs for himself.”