"Those are sheep from Pella," Joseph said soberly, "in my care. They were taken from me because," he paused till a more tactful statement should suggest itself, but, lacking it, drove ahead with spirit, "there was not more of me to stop your soldiers."
"I believe you," Titus replied heartily. "But that is the fortune of war. Still, you Jews have a habit of refusing to accept defeat rationally."
"I am not a Jew," Joseph explained. "I am born of Arab blood, and I am a Christian."
"Worse and worse," said Titus.
Joseph shifted his position argumentatively.
"Is it?" he asked. "Are you making war on Pella or Jerusalem? Was it Pella or the hundred Jewish towns that cost Rome so much of late? Pella is not exactly your friend, though neither are most of your provinces; but are you going to pillage Egypt or Persia because Judea is in rebellion?"
Titus threw his plump leg over the horn of his saddle and sat sidewise. One of his tribunes looked at the other with a flickering smile that was not entirely free of contempt. But his fellow returned a stare that for immobility would have done credit to the Memnon.
"Now," Titus began, "I have heard of this fault in the Christians. They don't understand warfare."
"We don't," Joseph declared bluntly. "We do not see why you should take my sheep to feed your army, when we have had nothing to do with bringing your army over here. We haven't cost you one drop of Roman blood or one denarius of Roman money, and yet you are taking at one act the whole of our substance and punishing us for the misdeeds of others–others whom you haven't succeeded in punishing yet."
"That is bad judgment," Titus said, frowning at the last sentence.