CHAPTER III
THE MAN WHO OPENED HIS EYES
To Tor, groaning in the wordless anguish of his hurts, came a soft inquiring touch on his heaving shoulders. Led by that kind instinct which guides all wounded creatures, the child had crawled away and hidden himself from unfriendly eyes in the mouth of a ruinous sewer hard by. Here he had lain long hours, exhausted with agony. The dog snuffed the small huddled figure from head to foot with short, anxious whines. Then he fell to industriously licking the one limp brown hand which crept out from beneath the ragged tunic.
“Baladan,” whispered Tor, and shrieked aloud with the intolerable smart of rising tears in his blinded eyes.
The shriek, faint as it was, reached the ears of a second boy, who was searching carefully from side to side of the gloomy little thoroughfare. “’Tis thou, Tor,” he exclaimed, stooping to stare in at the sewer’s mouth. “Art bad hurt?”
“Oh, Dan, the accursed lash of the Roman smote my eyes,” groaned the child, and sputtered out some strange maledictions in the Egyptian tongue, which he had learned from his late master.
The second boy pursed up his coarse lips into a soft whistle of comprehension. Then he bent down and stared briefly into the drooped face of the half-delirious sufferer. “Body of Bacchus!” [pg 37]he murmured, smiting his bare thigh with closed fist. “One more blind beggar in Jerusalem.” Then raising his fingers to his lips he gave vent to a shrill cry of summons. It was promptly answered by the soft thud of a water-carrier’s feet and the loud tinkle of his brazen cups.
“Give him to drink,” commanded Dan, indicating Tor with a grimy forefinger. “The poor fool hath brought ill-fortune upon himself. ’Tis the evil eye of a surety.” With that he produced a copper coin, which the water-carrier acknowledged with a cup of water from the goat-skin on his back.
“I will come again at sunset and give him to drink,” said the water-carrier, with a sidelong glance of fear and pity. Then the two departed, leaving Tor to his misery.