“Nay, it is not well. ’Tis an evil thing for a child to bite like a dog. Wilt thou eat with me, small one?”
“I bite like a dog because I hate like a dog and hunger like a dog,” replied Tor slowly. “I stole from the beggar, [pg 26]and thou didst take the money from me by force. Which is better? Nay, Galilean, I will not eat with thee.”
The stranger sat down upon a stone with an air of indifference. “I am hungry,” he said, and, producing a brown loaf and a handful of olives from his pouch, began to eat.
Little by little the child crept nearer. Presently he stretched out one puny hand and snatched a fragment of bread which the man carelessly let fall.
“Ah, thou?” said the Galilean, with an air of surprise, and let fall another bit. Later he placed a large piece of the bread on the stone at his side and looked away at the tops of the houses.
“Does the hand that bleeds hurt thee over much, stranger?” inquired a small voice at his elbow.
“Does a hand that is wounded to bleed[pg 27]ing hurt?” repeated the Galilean gravely. “Verily, the smart is grievous; art satisfied?”
“Why didst thou hold me when I would not?” inquired the child. “Was my doing any business of thine?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Nay,” he replied doggedly, “it was not. Moreover, I should have been attending to the beam in mine own eye. I have been taught to forbear quarreling—even for a just cause. I am already punished, and shall be punished again. ‘Bray a fool in a mortar,’ sayeth the wise Solomon, ‘yet will his folly not depart from him.’ Such a fool am I.”
“Who told thee it was an evil thing to fight, Galilean?” asked the boy curiously. He was sitting quite confidently now at the stranger’s side, munching bread and olives. “I say it is not evil—[pg 28]that is, unless one is beaten. Then, indeed, it is evil. But one may always curse another. I have learned divers strong curses—ay, I am able to curse a man or a beast in many tongues.”