He impatiently set down the vessel and called the girl loudly, but she did not move till he touched her somewhat roughly with his foot.  Then she sprang up as if stung by an asp, and two eyes as black as night flashed at him out of her dark young face; the delicate nostrils of her aquiline nose quivered, and her white teeth gleamed as she cried: 

“Am I a dog that you wake me in this fashion?” He colored, pointed sullenly to the well and said sharply:  “Your cattle have troubled the water again; I shall have to wait here till it is clear and I can draw some.”

“The day is long,” answered the shepherdess, and while she rose she pushed, as if by chance, another stone into the water.

Her triumphant, flashing glance as she looked down into the troubled spring did not escape the young man, and he exclaimed angrily: 

“He is right!  You are a venomous snake—­a demon of hell.”

She raised herself and made a face at him, as if she wished to show him that she really was some horrible fiend; the unusual sharpness of her mobile and youthful features gave her a particular facility for doing so.  And she fully attained her end, for he drew back with a look of horror, stretched out his arms to repel her, and exclaimed as he saw her uncontrollable laughter,

“Back, demon, back!  In the name of the Lord!  I ask thee, who art thou?”

“I am Miriam—­who else should I be?” she answered haughtily.

He had expected a different reply, her vivacity annoyed him, and he said angrily, “Whatever your name is you are a fiend, and I will ask Paulus to forbid you to water your beasts at our well.”

“You might run to your nurse, and complain of me to her if you had one,” she answered, pouting her lips contemptuously at him.

He colored; she went on boldly, and with eager play of gesture.

“You ought to be a man, for you are strong and big, but you let yourself be kept like a child or a miserable girl; your only business is to hunt for roots and berries, and fetch water in that wretched thing there.  I have learned to do that ever since I was as big as that!” and she indicated a contemptibly little measure, with the outstretched pointed fingers of her two hands, which were not less expressively mobile than her features.  “Phoh! you are stronger and taller than all the Amalekite lads down there, but you never try to measure yourself with them in shooting with a bow and arrows or in throwing a spear!”

“If I only dared as much as I wish!” he interrupted, and flaming scarlet mounted to his face, “I would be a match for ten of those lean rascals.”

“I believe you,” replied the girl, and her eager glance measured the youth’s broad breast and muscular arms with an expression of pride.  “I believe you, but why do you not dare?  Are you the slave of that man up there?”

“He is my father and besides—­”