The shepherd laughed in a mirthless way. “None to fill her place, Isaac; nor is it of another she thinketh. Nay! One there was who always appeared at the spring when I was waiting for my beloved. She was a clever, amusing maid, but a life with her would be like living on honey without any bread.”
Isaac nodded in comprehension. “The same have I felt toward all the maidens I ever met save one. Once, as I traveled with my pack, I was able to avert a danger she knew not of, and her face hath been in my memory ever since. I have not wished to dislodge it. She fed wild pigeons, I recall, in a romantic little gorge.”
A silence fell between them, each, with fine feeling, unwilling to ask for details not volunteered.
The next day, at parting, Isaac took from his own arm a heavy bracelet of gold and clasped it around Benjamin’s. “Not for its value,” he insisted, when the shepherd demurred, “but as a covenant of lasting friendship ’twixt thee and me. As thou hast saved my life so doth it belong to thee or thine if in aught I can ever serve thee.”
The next minute Benjamin was alone. At the turn of the road Isaac looked back and waved his hand in farewell and the shepherd, with a sigh, turned to his sheep and his constant thoughts of Rachel. He did not know that at that very hour events of considerable importance to both of them were taking place in the little “city” of their nativity.
Noontime, whose brightness had no power to dispel the sorrow which hung over Caleb’s household, saw Judith slipping, with a shudder, out of its gloomy portal. Abner was coming up the hill as she started to descend it. She answered his pleasant greeting with assumed diffidence.
“I hasten, my lord, desiring to spend a time with Rachel, who, as thou knowest, hath spent these eight weeks and more in the house and mostly on her bed, suffering from a mysterious sickness none dareth yet to name. Save that she hath long been secretly betrothed to my kinsman, Benjamin, who taketh his sheep to the hills, we know not where, and that her parents are very wroth—yet because thou hast looked with favor upon the maid would I warn thee—”
“I thank thee,” he said, slowly, his face somewhat paler than usual, and the two hurried their separate ways.
In strange contradiction to such solicitude, however, Judith did not visit Rachel. She rarely did. It was Miriam who sat by her friend’s side telling her of Hannah’s plight.