But he was wholly lost, the sick man would go on, rolling his head
from side to side; he could not join Laodice because he had loved a
woman of the wayside and could not cast out that love; he was not a
Jew because he had rather linger with this strange beauty in the hills
than hasten on the rescue of Jerusalem; he had not apostatized, though
he was as wholly lost as if he had done so; he hated the heathen and
would not be one of them. He would abide in the wilderness and perish,
if this young spirit that abode by his side, with a face like
Michael's and a form so like the shepherd David's, would only suffer
the darkness to come at him.
"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.
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