"
"Did you," the Maccabee began again, after silence, "care for me
alone?"
"There has been no one here but us," the boy said, hesitating at the
symptoms of gratitude in the Maccabee's voice.
"Us?"
"You and me."
After another silence, the Maccabee laughed weakly.
"It requires two to constitute 'us' and I am, by all signs, not a
whole one!"
"But you will be in a few days," the boy declared admiringly. "You are
an excellent sick man."
The Maccabee looked at him meditatively.
"I am merely perverse," he said darkly; "I knew it would be so much
pleasure to my murderer to know that I died, duly."
The shepherd repressed his curiosity, as the best thing for his
patient's welfare, and suggested another subject rather disjointedly.
"I have been thinking," he said, "about Jerusalem. I was there once
upon a time."
"Once!" the Maccabee said. "You are old enough to attend the
Passover."
"But our people do not attend the feast. We are Christians."
The Maccabee moved so that he could look at the boy. He might have
known it, he exclaimed to himself. It was just such an extreme act of
mercy, this assuming the care of a stranger in a wilderness, as he had
ever known Christians to do in that city of irrational faiths,
Ephesus.
"Well?" he said, hoping the boy would go on and spare him an
expression on that announcement.
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