“Those are sheep from Pella,” Joseph said soberly, “in my care.  They were taken from me because,” he paused till a more tactful statement should suggest itself, but, lacking it, drove ahead with spirit, “there was not more of me to stop your soldiers.”

“I believe you,” Titus replied heartily.  “But that is the fortune of war.  Still, you Jews have a habit of refusing to accept defeat rationally.”

“I am not a Jew,” Joseph explained.  “I am born of Arab blood, and I am a Christian.”

“Worse and worse,” said Titus.

Joseph shifted his position argumentatively.

“Is it?” he asked.  “Are you making war on Pella or Jerusalem?  Was it Pella or the hundred Jewish towns that cost Rome so much of late?  Pella is not exactly your friend, though neither are most of your provinces; but are you going to pillage Egypt or Persia because Judea is in rebellion?”

Titus threw his plump leg over the horn of his saddle and sat sidewise.  One of his tribunes looked at the other with a flickering smile that was not entirely free of contempt.  But his fellow returned a stare that for immobility would have done credit to the Memnon.

“Now,” Titus began, “I have heard of this fault in the Christians.  They don’t understand warfare.”

“We don’t,” Joseph declared bluntly.  “We do not see why you should take my sheep to feed your army, when we have had nothing to do with bringing your army over here.  We haven’t cost you one drop of Roman blood or one denarius of Roman money, and yet you are taking at one act the whole of our substance and punishing us for the misdeeds of others—­others whom you haven’t succeeded in punishing yet.”

“That is bad judgment,” Titus said, frowning at the last sentence.

“Unpleasant truth always is,” Joseph retorted.

One of the tribunes laughed impulsively and Titus looked around at him reproachfully.

“Come, come, Carus,” he said.

“Thy pardon, Caesar,” the tribune replied, “but we’ll be whipped in this wordy battle.  And even a small defeat were an unpropitious sign on this expedition.”

“To Hades with your signs!  If I am whipped with six hundred back of me, I ought to be!  Boy, we have your sheep by conquest; you will have to take them back the same way.”

Joseph’s face fell.

“I have had them since I was nine years old.  I’ve tended them since they were lambs and their mothers before them.  It is like surrendering so many children,” he said dejectedly.  “In truth I can fight for them even if it be but to lose, and I am bidden not to fight at that.”

“By Hector, that is not a Jewish tenet!” Titus exclaimed.

Joseph said nothing.  He stood still in the path of the Roman six hundred with his curly head sunk on his breast.  There was silence.

“Is it?” Titus demanded uncomfortably.

“No; and for that reason you are still fighting them and will fight and lose and lose and lose, before you win.  Still, it is no safeguard not to fight you; you take our substance anyhow.  Be we peace-lovers or not, there is warfare; if we do not fight we are fought against.”