"HE LOOKED DOWN AT PHINEAS, AND SMILED BLISSFULLY"
Oh, the delight of that slow easy motion! The joy of being carried along without pain or effort! Who could realize how much it meant to the little fellow whose halting steps had so long been taken in weariness and suffering?
Swinging along in the cool air, so far above the foot-passengers, it seemed to him that he looked down upon a new earth. Blackbirds flew along the roads, startled by their passing. High overhead, a lark had not yet finished her morning song. Lambs bleated in the pastures, and the lowing of herds sounded on every hill-side.
Not a sight or sound escaped the boy; and all the morning he rode on without speaking, not a care in his heart, not a cloud on his horizon.
At noon they stopped in a little grove of olive-trees where a cool spring gurgled out from the rocks.
Phineas spread out their lunch at a little distance from the others; and they ate it quickly, with appetites sharpened by the morning's travel. Afterwards Joel stretched himself out on the ground to rest, and was asleep almost as soon as his eyelids could shut out the noontide glare of the sun from his tired eyes.
When he awoke, nearly an hour afterward, he heard voices near him in earnest conversation. Raising himself on his elbow, he saw Phineas at a little distance, talking to an old man who had ridden one of the foremost camels.
They must have been talking of the miracle, for the old man, as he stroked his long white beard, was saying, "But men are more wont to be astonished at the sun's eclipse, than at his daily rising. Look, my friend!"
He pointed to a wild grape-vine clinging to a tree near by. "Do you see those bunches of half-grown grapes? There is a constant miracle. Day by day, the water of the dew and rain is being changed into the wine of the grape. Soil and sunshine are turning into fragrant juices. Yet you feel no astonishment."
"No," assented Phineas; "for it is by the hand of God it is done."