Obil rode in silence. Had he “turned rabbi”? one asked. “Here, Fulvius!” laughed another, twisting himself on his horse to turn the youngest rider’s face toward Obil. “Obil has taken up the doctrine of the new rabbi in Galilee. If I smite you on one cheek you shall turn to me the other. Try him!”
Fulvius tried, and was promptly knocked to the ground, his head cut on the stones, his wrist sprained. Laughing and swearing by their gods, and Fulvius raging, they set him on his horse and clattered on.
Obil stopped to pick up a little hurt jerboa. The strange creature, half bird, half mouse, had been nearly crushed, but it was alive. It seemed to look at him appealingly. Strangely, it made him think of a child he had picked up once and thrown into some dark pool to end its misery. (They had wiped out a whole clan that day, over in cruel Thracian forests.)
“Thou must die,” said Obil, and gently laid the thing down, its eyes turned away from the blaring light. Then he drew his hand across his own eyes, mounted and rode on, thinking, “Those Steaming scents all around go to a man’s head on a day like this.” And over and over Obil said grimly in his own thoughts, “The hour has come!”
All of the four had business in Capernaum, after which they were to go separate ways.
Obil went out to Cana and left his horse at a little vineyard that he knew, for reasons of his own. And walking on his way to Jerusalem he came to Magdala.
THAT day the Lord was in Magdala. All the wretchedness of the world seemed gathered there,—a vast, groaning, pleading, hideous, tumultuous sea of waiting, with one Face shining out of this darkness like a Star.
A Voice, infinitely sweet, told of the Kingdom of God, while the wondrous hands lifted and blessed and healed.
Obil stood on the farther edge of this sea at first, but the Voice reached him as it poured forth glad news of peace and freedom and love, and swept away the rags and tatters, the “old garments” of cruel doctrines of Scribe and Pharisee.