Stronger even than the cords of love are the cords of habit. If a man has shaken a brazen cup and bellowed for alms for more than a score of years, the cup and the cry will have become a part of himself, not lightly to be shaken off. Chelluh, with eyes, hungered as before, and as before he coveted money for his few and evil pleasures. So it came to pass that after a day spent in sight-seeing, he was again squatting comfortably in his familiar corner by the Damascus gate, his eyes closed, his horny knuckles beating a monotonous accompaniment to the familiar mendicant’s [pg 100]whine: “Have mercy, kind lords of Jerusalem! Have mercy on the sorrows of one born blind! Kind lords, beautiful ladies, only a denarius, I beseech of you!”
Tor, searching anxiously for his new Master in every corner of the city, came upon the beggar unawares, and stopped short in indignant amaze. “Did not the King, my Master, give thee sight but yesterday?” he demanded.
Chelluh opened his eyes with a muttered malediction. “Who art thou,” he snarled, “to question me? How else shall I live?”
Tor looked hard at the man’s great bulk. “There are many laborers working in the great quarries yonder,” he answered slowly. “The Romans pay every man of them a silver penny.”
Chelluh replied to this suggestion with [pg 101]a string of curses spoken in three languages. He ended by hurling a great stone at the lad’s head. Badly aimed, the missile crashed over the wall of a garden hard by.
There was a moment of silence, during which Chelluh scuttled rapidly away. Then a small door in the wall was suddenly thrown open and two men darted out. They looked up and down the narrow street, and seeing no one but Tor, who stood staring in stupefied silence after the beggar, they seized the boy and dragged him into the enclosure, locking and barring the door behind them.
“’Tis an evil offspring of beggars that hath done this mischief,” exclaimed one of the men angrily. “Did I not say it?”
The other man fixed his eyes on Tor. “Didst thou throw the stone that broke the great vase yonder?” he asked.
Tor’s wild, bright eyes followed the man’s accusing finger to the spot where an urn carven from costly marble lay in ruins amid a tangle of bright flowers. “I did not throw the stone,” he said.
“Lies!” cried the first man, stamping his foot. “Why question a dog? Give the fellow to me; I will scourge him soundly and thrust him forth. His bleeding back will, perchance, warn others of his sort to keep their distance from the palace.”