“Now we’ll share our guests in brotherly fashion,” said Barabbas.  “You shall have the old man and the child.”

“They are father, mother, and child,” replied Dismas; “they belong together, we will protect them.”

“Brother,” said Barabbas, who was in high good humour at the ease of the capture, “your dice.  We’ll throw for them.  First, for the ass.”

“Right, Barabbas.”

He threw the eight-cornered stone with the black marks, and it fell on his outspread cloak.  The ass was his.

“Now for the father and son!”

“Right, Barabbas.”

The dice fell.  Barabbas rejoiced.  Dismas was winner.

“A third time for the woman!”

“Right, Barabbas.”

He threw the dice; they fell on his cloak.

“What is that?  The dice have no marks!  Dismas, stop this joke!  You’ve changed the dice.”

When he took them up in his hand the black marks were there again all right.  They drew a second and a third time.  As before the dice had no marks when they fell.

“What does it mean, Dismas?  The dice are blind.”

“I think it’s you who are blind, Barabbas,” laughed Dismas.  “Here, drink these drops, and then lie down and sleep.”

The strong man soon rolled on to the sand beside the ass, and snored loudly.

Then Dismas crawled into the cave and woke the strangers, in order to get them away from the libertine.  For he dared not venture a trial of strength with Barabbas.  He had some trouble with Joseph, but at last they were beneath the starry sky, Mary and the child on the ass, Joseph leading it.  Dismas walked in front in order to show them the way.  They went slowly through the darkness; no one spoke a word.  Dismas was sunk in thought.  Past days, when he had rested like this child in his mother’s arms and his father had led them over the Arabian desert, rose before him.  Many a holy saying of the prophets had echoed through his robber life and would not be silenced.

After they had waded through the sand and clambered over the rocks for hours, a golden band of light shone in the east.  The bushes and trees of the oasis of Descheme stood out against it.

Here Dismas left the wanderers to their safe road, in order to return to the cave.  When he turned back with good wishes for the rest of their journey, he was met by a look from the child’s shining eyes.  The beaming glance terrified him with the terror of wonderment.  Never before had child or man looked at him with look so grateful, so glowing, so loving as this boy, his pretty curly head turned towards him, his hands stretched out in form of a cross, as if he wished to embrace him.  Dismas’s limbs trembled as if a flash of lightning had fallen at his side, and yet it was only a child’s eyes.  Holding his head with both hands, he fled, without knowing why he fled, for he would rather have fallen on his knees before the wondrous child.  But something like a judgment seemed to thrust him forth, back into the horror of the desert.