Joel: A Boy of Galilee

Joel looked at him with increasing respect. "That must have been the kind of sling that King David killed the giant with," he said, handing it back after a careful examination.

"King David!" repeated Buz, dully, "seems to me I have heard of him, sometime or other; but I don't know about the giant."

"Why where have you been all your life?" cried Joel, in amazement. "I thought everybody knew about that. Did you never go to a synagogue?"

Buz shook his bushy head. "They don't have synagogues in these parts. The master calls us in and reads to us on the Sabbath; but I always get sleepy when I sit right still, and so I generally get behind somebody and go to sleep. The shepherds talk to each other a good deal about such things, I am never with them though. I spend all my time running errands."

Shocked at such ignorance, Joel began to tell the shepherd king's life with such eloquence that Buz stopped short in the road to listen.

Seeing this the donkey stood still also, wagged its one ear, and went to sleep. But Buz listened, wider awake than he had ever been before in his life.

The story was a favorite one with Joel, and he put his whole soul into it.

"Who told you that?" asked Buz, taking a long breath when the interesting tale was finished.

"Why I read it myself!" answered Joel.

"Oh, can you read?" asked Buz, looking at Joel in much the same way that Joel had looked at him after he killed the hawk. "I do not see how anybody can. It puzzles me how people can look at all those crooked black marks and call them rivers and flocks and things. I looked one time, just where Master had been reading about a great battle. And I didn't see a single thing that looked like a warrior or a sword or a battle-axe, though he called them all by name. There were several little round marks that might have been meant for sling-stones; but it was more than I could make out, how he could get any sense out of it."

Joel leaned back and laughed till the hills rang, laughed till the tears stood in his eyes, and the donkey waked up and ambled on.

Buz did not seem to be in the least disturbed by his merriment, although he was puzzled as to its cause. He only stooped to pick up more stones for his sling as they went on.

It was not long till they came to some of the men, – great brawny fellows dressed in skins, with coarse matted hair and tanned faces. How little they knew of what was going on in the busy world outside their fields! As Joel talked to them he found that Cæsar's conquests and Hero's murders had only come to them as vague rumors. All the petty wars and political turmoils were unknown to them. They could talk to him only of their flocks and their faith, both as simple as their lives.

Joel, in his wisdom learned of the Rabbis, felt himself infinitely their superior, child though he was. But he enjoyed his day spent with them. He and Buz ate the ample lunch they had brought, dipped up water from the brook in cups they made of oak-leaves, and both finally fell asleep to the droning music of the shepherd's pipes, played softly on the uplands.

A distant rumble of thunder aroused them, late in the afternoon; and they started up to find the shepherds calling in their flocks. The gaunt sheep dogs raced to and fro, bringing the straying goats together. The shepherds brought the sheep into line with well-aimed sling-shots, touching them first on one side, and then on the other, as oxen are guided by the touch of the goad.

Joel looked up at the darkening sky with alarm. "Who would have thought of a storm on such a day!" he exclaimed.

Buz cocked his eyes at the horizon. "I thought it might come to this," he said; "for as we came along this morning there were no spider-webs on the grass; the ants had not uncovered the doors of their hills; and all the signs pointed to wet weather. I thought though, that the time of the latter rains had passed a week ago. I am always glad when the stormy season is over. This one is going to be a hard one."

"What shall we do?" asked Joel.

Buz scratched his head. Then he looked at Joel. "You never could get home on that trifling donkey before it overtakes us; and they'll be worried about you. I'd best take you up to the sheep-fold. You can stay all night there, very comfortably. I'll run home and tell them where you are, and come back for you in the morning."

Joel hesitated, appalled at spending the night among such dirty men; but the heavy boom of thunder, steadily rolling nearer, silenced his half-spoken objection. By the time the donkey had carried him up the hillside to the stone-walled enclosure round the watch-tower, the shepherds were at the gates with their flocks.

Joel watched them go through the narrow passage, one by one. Each man kept count of his own sheep, and drove them under the rough sheds put up for their protection.

A good-sized hut was built against the hillside, where the shepherds might find refuge. Buz pointed it out to Joel; then he turned the donkey into one of the sheds, and started homeward on the run.

Joel shuddered as a blinding flash of lightning was followed by a crash of thunder that shook the hut. The wind bore down through the trees like some savage spirit, shrieking and moaning as it flew. Joel heard a shout, and looked out to the opposite hillside. Buz was flying along in break-neck race with the storm. At that rate he would soon be home. How he seemed to enjoy the race, as his strong limbs carried him lightly as a bird soars!

At the top he turned to look back and laugh and wave his arms, – a sinewy little figure standing out in bold relief against a brazen sky.

Joel watched till he was out of sight. Then, as the wind swooped down from the mountains, great drops of rain began to splash through the leaves.

The men crowded into the hut. One of them started forward to close the door, but stopped suddenly, with his brown hairy hand uplifted.

"Hark ye!" he exclaimed.

Joel heard only the shivering of the wind in the tree-tops; but the man's trained ear caught the bleating of a stray lamb, far off and very faint.

"I was afraid I was mistaken in my count; they jostled through the gate so fast I could not be sure." Going to a row of pegs along the wall, he took down a lantern hanging there and lit it; then wrapping his coat of skins more closely around him, and calling one of the dogs, he set out into the gathering darkness.

Joel watched the fitful gleam of the lantern, flickering on unsteadily as a will-o'-the-wisp. A moment later he heard the man's deep voice calling tenderly to the lost animal; then the storm struck with such fury that they had to stand with their backs against the door of the hut to keep it closed.

Flash after flash of lightning blinded them. The wind roared down the mountain and beat against the house till Joel held his breath in terror. It was midnight before it stopped. Joel thought of the poor shepherd out on the hills, and shuddered. Even the men seemed uneasy about him, as hour after hour passed, and he did not come.

Finally he fell asleep in the corner, on a pile of woolly skins. In the gray dawn he was awakened by a great shout. He got up, and went to the door. There stood the shepherd. His bare limbs were cut by stones and torn by thorns. Blood streamed from his forehead where he had been wounded by a falling branch. The mud on his rough garments showed how often he had slipped and fallen on the steep paths.

Joel noticed, with a thrill of sympathy, how painfully he limped. But there on the bowed shoulders was the lamb he had wandered so far to find; and as the welcoming shout arose again, Joel's weak little cheer joined gladly in.

"How brave and strong he is," thought the boy. "He risked his life for just one pitiful little lamb."

The child's heart went strangely out to this rough fellow who stood holding the shivering animal, sublimely unconscious that he had done anything more than a simple duty.

Joel, who felt uncommonly hungry after his supperless night, thought he would mount the donkey and start back alone. But just as he was about to do so, a familiar bushy head showed itself in the door of the sheepfold. Buz had brought him some wheat-cakes and cheese to eat on the way back.

Joel was so busy with this welcome meal that he did not talk much. Buz kept eying him in silence, as if he longed to ask some question. At last, when the cheese had entirely disappeared, he found courage to ask it.

"Were you always like that?" he said abruptly, motioning to Joel's back and leg. Somehow the reference did not wound him as it generally did. He began to tell Buz about the Samaritan boy who had crippled him. He never was able to tell the story of his wrongs without growing passionately angry. He had worked himself into a white heat by the time he had finished.

"I'd get even with him," said Buz, excitedly, with a wicked squint of his eyes.

"How would you do it?" demanded Joel. "Cripple him as he did me?"

"Worse than that!" exclaimed Buz, stopping to take deliberate aim at a leaf overhead, and shooting a hole exactly through the centre with his sling. "I'd blind him as quick as that! It's a great deal worse to be blind than lame."

Joel closed his eyes, and rode on a few moments in darkness. Then he opened them and gave a quick glad look around the landscape. "My! What if I never could have opened them again," he thought. "Yes, Buz, you're right," he said aloud. "It is worse to be blind; so I shall take Rehum's eyesight also, some time. Oh, if that time were only here!"

Although the subject of the miracle at Cana had been constantly in the mind of Phineas, and often near his lips, he did not speak of it to his host until the evening before his departure.

It was just at the close of the evening meal. Nathan ben Obed rose half-way from his seat in astonishment, then sank back.

"How old a man is this friend of yours?" he asked.

"About thirty, I think," answered Phineas. "He is a little younger than I."

"Where was he born?"

"In Bethlehem, I have heard it said, though his home has always been in Nazareth."

"Strange, strange!" muttered the man, stroking his long white beard thoughtfully.

Joel reached over and touched Phineas on the arm. "Will you not tell Rabbi Nathan about the wonderful star that was seen at that time?" he asked, in a low tone.