As the door was thrown open to admit them she cried, mournfully, “Peace, peace be to thy home, though there be none in mine.”
She was almost incoherent with grief. “The word came to me but a little while before the Sabbath and I waited until the passing of the holy day to hurry to thee, my friends. The dogs mistook us for foes and pursued. In the darkness we stumbled oft and fell. Yea, we are bruised, but our bodies are less sore than our hearts, for Abner, my creditor, taketh my two sons, Eli and Nathan, to be bondmen for debt.
“Since my widowhood have I lived on his land. Oft hath he brought us food. Once, twice, thrice have I borrowed of him, so kind hath he seemed. Always he urged me to take more and yet more than I asked. Never once hath this shame seemed possible. Let us kneel in supplication to the God of our fathers.”
“Yea, Hannah, and I doubt not he will hear and answer. Abide thou with us for a time and to-morrow we will see if aught can be done.”
CHAPTER III
VISITORS
Over the peaceful Israelitish hills came the piping of a reed flute. Anyone familiar with the country would know that it was a shepherd, seeking to assure the flock of his continued presence that they might fear no evil, but to the young man, scarcely more than a boy, lying prone on his back in the shade of the bushes, it conveyed nothing at all, yet it was the only sound which persisted in his consciousness. He lived by it as much as did the sheep and goats. When the tune was blithe he saw sunlit fields and abundant harvests; shaded glens and cool, gurgling streams; a palace and a soldiers’ barracks; the face of an old, bedridden woman and a delicately pretty girl feeding pigeons in a romantic spot. When the notes were sad—as they frequently were—he defended this maid from some grave peril in which the odds were all against him.
There came a day, however, when he no longer raved in delirium, but looked upon his surroundings with recognition in his eyes. He tried to sit up, to reach a little water-bag that looked cool and comforting, but finding himself weighted down with a strange heaviness, contented himself with gazing around wonderingly. The sky seemed so near. No, it was not the sky. It was a covering of skins sewed together and stretched from one bush to another over him. Nothing else save the interminable flute which told his newly awakened senses that the shepherd was near. It was all so soothing, just lying there, and he was so unexpectedly weak, that he closed his eyes and sank into a deep and refreshing slumber.
When he awoke the canopy over his head had been removed and he gazed at the brilliant stars. Looking around, he decided that he must be inside of a sheepfold. By the moonlight he discerned roughly built stone walls on four sides. The open entrance was guarded by a recumbent shepherd, staff in hand, alert, watchful. One, two, three other figures he counted, evidently sleeping heavily beside great gray masses which he knew must be sheep. All at once a scream pierced the silence, a hideous, unearthly sound, and then a long, lithe body leaped over the wall.
The young man who observed these things knew instinctively that it was a mountain lion, tempted far from its rocky lair by hunger. He knew that the shepherds, instantly awakened, would give battle, and that they would be more than a match for any wild animal in search of food, but a sense of his own helplessness swept over him. He saw the terror of the sheep, the mangled body of a victim, heard the cry of its mother, and then a great wave of sickness shut out sight and sound. He had fainted from sheer weakness.
A little later he opened his eyes upon the troubled face of the shepherd—his shepherd, as he soon learned to call him in distinction from the others, who paid him but scant attention. It was a kindly, pleasant face, over-thoughtful perhaps but with health and youth written large under its tan. In the days that followed, the invalid found himself grasping at the strength and energy radiated by this personality, basking in his sunny smile, entertained and quite frequently instructed by his conversation, cheered and encouraged by his practical helpfulness.