We stumbled upon a pair huddled in the
shadow of a building. We stumbled upon many figures in shadows, but
one of these murmured a name that I heard once in the hills hereabout,
and I had profited by that name, so I halted. It was an old man,
starved and weary and ill; with him was a gray ghost of a creature
with long white hair, that seemed to be struck with terror the instant
it heard my voice. At first I thought it was a withered old woman, but
it proved to be a man--somehow seeming young in spite of the
snow-white hair and wasted frame. I had them taken up, the gray ghost
resisting mightily, and carried to my burrow where they now lie. They
eat; they take up space; they add nothing to my cause. But I can not
turn them out. The old man disarms me by that name."
He looked down at her with softening eyes.
"And the shepherd held thy hand?" he said softly. She turned upon him
in astonishment. How much of joy and surprise and hope he could bring
in a single visit, she thought. Now, behold he had met that same
delightsome child that had passed like a dash of sunlight across her
dark day.
"Did you meet the shepherd of Pella?" she asked. Instant deduction
supplied her the name that had moved him to compassion. "And did he
serve you in the name of his Prophet?" she whispered.
"He saved my life in the name of his Christ, but was tender of me in
thy name," he replied.
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