"We don't know. They can't tell us. Perhaps they wondered a bit. More likely they knew he'd gone up to die and wouldn't come back. They know deeper than we think they know among themselves, Auna."
"I've often been sorry for that poor Scape-goat in the Bible, father. I read about him to grandmother long ago, one Sunday, and never forgot him."
"And so have I been sorry for him, too."
They tramped on together and presently Jacob spoke. He was thinking still of her last speech and his mind had turned dark.
"The Scape-goat in the wilderness was a happy beast compared to me," he said suddenly. "He went to his doom a clean thing—a harmless creature, pure as Christ's self under his filthy load of human sins. For a foul burden doesn't make the carrier foul. He'd done no wrong and wondered, perhaps, in his brute mind, why the scarlet thread was tied upon him and he was driven into the unkind desert, far from his bite of green grass and the shadow to guard him against the burning sun. But I'm different. I'm a goat caked and rotted with my own sins. The sins of the world are white and light against mine."
"I won't hear you say things like that, father. I won't live with you if you say things like that."
"Bear with me, bear with me. It comes in great waves, and I'm a drowning man till they roll over and pass. You'll sweeten me presently. Who could live with you and not grow sweeter, you innocent?"
He broke off.
Venus throbbed upon the golden green of the west, and as they descended, the valley was already draped with a thin veil of mist under which the river purred. From the kennels came yapping of the dogs; and when they reached home and entered the yard, half a dozen red terriers leapt round Auna and nosed with excitement at "Beardy's" horns.