"Where did you get them?" the tribune demanded.
The shepherd who had withdrawn to the side of the road on the approach of the column looked at the questioner with resentful eyes from which the moisture had not vanished.
"From me!" he said.
Both the purple-wearing young general and his tribune looked at him amusedly.
"How many killed and wounded, Sergius?" the tribune asked.
The silent and disapproving tribune, observing that the commanding officer had not given an order to halt, brought the six hundred to, lest they ride their general down.
"You!" the general exclaimed with his eyes on the young shepherd.
The boy looked up into the face of the Roman who sat above him on a snow-white horse.
It was a young face, tanned by the sun of Alexandria, but bright with an emanation of light that somehow was made tangible by the flash of his teeth as he talked and the sparkle of his lively eyes. For a soldier exposed to the open air and the ruffian life of the camp and burdened with the grave task of subduing a desperate nation, he was free of disfigurements. His brows were knitted as if to give his full soft eyes protection and the frown, with the laughing cut of his youthful lips, gave his face a quizzical expression that was entirely winning. In countenance and figure he was handsome, refined and thoroughly Roman. The little shepherd was won to him instantly. Without knowing that the world from one border to the other had already named this charming young Roman the Darling of Mankind, the little shepherd, had his lips been shaped to poetry, would have called him that.
So Joseph, the shepherd, son of Thomas, the Christian, and Titus, son of Vespasian, Emperor of the World, looked at each other with perfect fellowship.