CHAPTER XXX.
A FLASK OF CRYSTAL.
"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 Judæa, 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."