Julian bent hastily and snatched the signet from the nerveless hand and fumbling in the bosom drew forth the wallet there.  He opened it, finding within ancient parchments with heavy seals, new writings, rolls of notes and a packet of letters.  He rose, trembling violently, and backed away.  After a moment’s fascinated gaze at the roadway to see if the pilgrims passing had seen what he had done, he whirled about, mounted his horse and galloped frantically toward Jerusalem.

Meanwhile the midday activity on the Roman roadway swept by the smoldering fire and the motionless figure lying in the grass some distance back from the highway.  Along the splendid causeway the Passover pilgrims fared, men afoot, men on camels, families and solitary travelers; the poor, the once rich, the humble and the haughty; figures in burnooses, gabardines, gowns and tunics; striped and checkered woolens, linens or rags; noisy or silent, angry or sad, hour in and hour out, until the hills were a-throb with the human atmosphere.  Time and again the sweet invitation of the rare grass along the marsh invited the way-weary to halt to tie a sandal, to bind up a wound, to eat a crust spread with curds or simply to rest.  No one approached the silent man who had fallen beside a dying fire.  They were tired enough to refrain from disturbing a man who slept.  So, though they looked at him from where they sat and two or three asked each other if he were asleep or merely weary, he was left alone.  One by one they who halted took up their journey again and the figure in the grass lay still.

Finally near the noon hour there came from the summit of a hill overhanging the road, a high, wild, youthful yell that cut with startling distinctness through the dead level of human communication on the highway.  Each of the travelers below looked up to see a young shepherd in sheepskins with long-blowing stiff crinkled locks flying back from a dusky face, with eyes soft and shining as those of some wild thing.  Around him eddied a mob of sheep as wild as he, and a Natolian dog raced hither and thither in a cloud of dust, rounding the edge of the flock and shaping it to the advance of the young faun that mastered it.

“Sheep! by the prophets!” one of the sedate Jews exclaimed.

“The only flock in existence in Judea, I venture!” his companion declared.

“And so hopelessly doomed to Roman possession that it can not be called in existence.”

“Heigh!  Hello!  Young David!” one of the younger men called up to the shepherd.  “Does Titus pay you for minding his mutton?”

“Salute, neighbors!” another shouted.  “Here is the Roman commissary!”

“Ill-fathered son of an Ishmaelite!” a Tyrian said to this jester.  “That you should make sport of Judea’s humiliation!”

The shepherd who had paused amid his whirlpool of sheep wisely held his peace.  There was a division of sentiment here that were better not aggravated.  He halted long enough for the road to clear below him and then descended into the valley and crossed to the low meadow on the opposite side.