“Toli, during all the months you have been with us I have never asked you whether you are married?”
The question was unexpected. The shepherd seemed to be considering. Then he answered:
“No.”
“What? You have never married? Have you no wife, no home?”
“Home—ah!” he sighed. “You are right, even I once had a home, even I had hopes of a bride, but they came to nought—what would you, it was not written in the book of destiny—I was poor.”
He spoke haltingly, and his eyes wandered here and there. And after one motion of his hand, as though to say “I have much sorrow in my heart,” he added:
“That girl is dead—and I, too, shall die, everything will die.”
One afternoon in March, as the shepherd did not appear, Mitu Tega prepared to go alone to the fold. He brought out the horse, bought two bags of bread, and a lamb freshly killed, went to the mill where he procured some barley, and then on slowly, quietly—he on foot, the horse in front—till he reached his destination just as the sun was disappearing behind the Aitosh mountains.
The shepherds rubbed their eyes when they saw him, but he called out:
“I have brought a lamb for roasting.”