"The beasts are gone, and there is an end of it; but I care not."

"Thou wouldst have told a different tale not many years since." And the speaker laughed. "Poof! I am cold," he continued, stooping to stir the fire. "We might as well have gone back before the sun set; there is no fuel here."

The other man shrugged his shoulders indifferently, and spread his lean fingers over the scanty fire. But he said nothing; after a time his companion spoke again in a slow, meditative way, as if to himself:

"My lord will say this: \'A poorer than I hath need of the beasts, therefore he hath taken them. Would that he had asked me, and I would have given him freely; nevertheless if he hath need, it is in itself sufficient to excuse the deed.\'"

"Verily," broke in the other with a sneer, "and because of this senile madness the tribe waxes poorer day by day. Abu Ben Hesed is a fool! I, Ben Kish, say so. What inheritance will my sons have that is worth the having if these things continue?"

"Senile madness, dost thou call it? And what says Ben Abu, who succeeds as chief when the old man shall be gathered to his fathers?"

"I have no dealings with him," answered Ben Kish sullenly. "He harps continually on the same string. \'Do this because the Nazarene commanded it. Forbear the other because the Nazarene declared that it was wrong.\' What do I care for this dead Nazarene or his sayings? Moreover I do not believe the tales that they tell of him, nor do any believe in Jud?a, save them that be poor and have nothing to lose thereby. I asked concerning the thing when I went up to Jerusalem of a great Rabbi, whom I saw in the temple. I had paid my vows and offered my sacrifice according to the law, and I heard the man speaking to the people concerning this new doctrine of the Nazarene. \'Blasphemous,\' he called it; \'a cunning device of Satan to entrap the foolish of heart, and above all, contrary to the law of Moses.\' Moreover, them that practise these unlawful sayings in Jerusalem are shortly to be dealt with."

"Said he so indeed?" exclaimed the other man, who was called Simeon. "Then is it something more than senile madness that doth ail our worshipful lord; the devil himself hath a hand in it."

"Listen," said Ben Kish, leaning toward his companion, "I am minded to tell thee what he further said to me in private. Swear to me that thou wilt not reveal it?"

"By the temple!" cried Simeon readily.

Ben Kish looked behind him and on either side as if he feared that some one might be lurking near. The glimmering wastes of desert showed vast and empty, stretching away beneath the keen sparkle of countless stars; the night wind wandering in the hollow darkness cried aloud for loneliness; the crouching camels stared at the meagre fire and chewed their cuds in drowsy contentment. "I have a feeling that some one is near--and listening," he said, shivering a little, and throwing a fresh handful of fuel on the dying fire.

The other man laughed, but he also shivered. "There is always that feeling in the desert at night," he said. "It must be the stars, that look down like large eyes out of heaven; or the wind, that hath in it the sound of a woman wailing for her dead. But what hast thou to say to me?"

"Thou hast sworn?"

"I have sworn--and by the temple; what more wouldst thou?"

"I spoke with him concerning our chief," said Ben Kish, "of how he came up to Jerusalem and fell in with them that told him of the Nazarene, and how that since that time he doth continually exhort and preach to us concerning the man, calling him the Messiah, the Holy and Righteous One foretold by the prophets and by Moses.

"\'Alas,\' said the Rabbi, \'he hath been snared by evil counsels, and he will also lead away after him all that hear.\'

"\'He hath not so led me,\' I said, \'for I believe not on a man who commands that if an enemy smite thee on one cheek, thou immediately turn to him the other that he may smite again; and if a thief take away thy camel let him have thy horse also; it is unjust!\'

"\'It is not only unjust; it is unlawful,\' said this wise Rabbi. \'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is the law--a good law and wise.\'"

"Yet must we submit to the chief of our tribe," said the man who listened, "that is also the law."

"Nay, friend," cried Ben Kish triumphantly, "listen still further. I said something of the like to the wise Rabbi, and he made me answer thus: \'The unbeliever and the blasphemer shall be cast forth and his inheritance shall be given to them which are faithful, for thus is it written in the law. If, therefore, there be them amongst you which are able, rise up and overcome this man who hath spoken thus blasphemously, and cast him forth............