“Unless I mistake,” the little shepherd said at such times, “there is more than a wound troubling this head.”

Thus day in and day out the shepherd watched by the sick man who had no medicine but the recuperative powers of his strong young body.  So there came a night when the boy, rousing from a doze into which he had dropped, saw the sick man stretched upon his pallet motionless as he had not been for days.  The shepherd felt the forehead and the wrists and sank again into slumber.  At dawn he rose from the earth which had been his bed throughout this time and went forth to attend his flocks, and when he was gone, the sick man opened his eyes.

He looked up at the blackened rafters; he looked out at either door and frowned perplexed, first at the hills, then at the valley.  He raised his head and dropped it suddenly with great amazement and much weariness.  Finally he ventured to lift a wilted and fragile hand and looked at it.  It was not white; but it was unsteady as a laurel leaf beside a waterfall.  After a moment’s rest from the exertion he parted his lips to speak, but a whisper faint as the sound of the air in the shrubs issued from them.  He listened but there was no answer.  There was the activity of birds and insects, moving leaves and bleating sheep without, but it was all blithely indifferent to him.  Finally he extended his arms and pressing them on his pallet tried to rise, but he could have lifted the earth as easily.  Falling back and dazed with weakness, he lay still and slept again.

When he awoke rested sufficiently to think, he recalled that he had been twice stabbed by Julian of Ephesus by the marsh on the road to Jerusalem.  He had probably been carried to this place and nursed back to life by the householder.

Then he remembered.  In his search after cause for his cousin’s attack upon him, he readily fixed upon Julian’s rage at the Maccabee’s preemption of the beautiful girl in the hills.  Instantly, the disgrace of violence committed in a quarrel between himself and his cousin over the possession of a woman, appealed to him.  And even as instantly, his defiant heart accepted its shame and persisted in its fault.  It is an extreme of love, indeed, if no circumstance however impelling raises a regret in the heart of a man; for he flung off with a weak gesture any chiding of conscience against cherishing his dream, and abandoned himself wholly to his yearning for the girl in the tissue of moonbeams.

There was a quiet step on the earth at the threshold.  Joseph, the shepherd, stood there.  The two looked at each other; one with inquiry and weakness in his face; the other with good-will and reassurance.

“Boy,” said the Maccabee feebly, “I have been sick.”

“Friend, I am witness to that.  I am your nurse,” the boy replied.

After a little silence the Maccabee extended his hand.  The boy took it with a sudden flush of emotion, but feeling its weakness, refrained from pressing it too hard, and laid it back with great care on his patient’s breast.  The Maccabee looked out at the door, away from the full eyes of his young host.