hills and the beauty on every side, they walked on till the road turned again.
Just ahead stood a house unusually large for a country district; everything about it bore an air of wealth and comfort.
"Our journey is at an end now," said Phineas. "Yonder lies the house of Nathan ben Obed. He owns all those flocks and herds we have seen in passing this last half hour. It is with him that I have business; and we will tarry with him until after the Sabbath."
They were evidently expected, for a servant came running out to meet them. He opened the gate and conducted them into a shaded court-yard. Here another servant took off their dusty sandals, and gave them water to wash their feet.
They had barely finished, when an old man appeared in the doorway; his long beard and hair were white as the abba he wore.
Phineas would have bowed himself to the ground before him, but the old man prevented it, by hurrying to take both hands in his, and kiss him on each cheek.
"Peace be to thee, thou son of my good friend Jesse!" he said. "Thou art indeed most welcome."
Joel lagged behind. He was always sensitive about meeting strangers; but the man's cordial welcome soon put him at his ease.
He was left to himself a great deal during the few days following. The business on which the old man had summoned Phineas required long consultations.
One day they rode away together to some outlying pastures, and were gone until night-fall. Joel did not miss them. He was spending long happy hours in the country sunshine. There was something to entertain him, every way he turned. For a while he amused himself by sitting in the door and poring over a roll of parchment that Sarah, the wife of Nathan ben Obed, brought him to read.
She was an old woman, but one would have found it hard to think so, had he seen how briskly she went about her duties of caring for such a large household.
After Joel had read for some little time, he became aware that some one was singing outside, in a whining, monotonous way, and he laid down his book to listen. The voice was not loud, but so penetrating he could not shut it out, and fix his mind on his story again. So he rolled up the parchment and laid it on the chest from which it had been taken; then winding his handkerchief around his head, turban fashion, he limped out in the direction of the voice.
Just around the corner of the house, under a great oak-tree, a woman sat churning. From three smooth poles joined at the top to form a tripod, a goat-skin bag hung by long leather straps. This was filled with cream; she was slapping it violently back and forth in time to her weird song.
Her feet were bare, and she wore only a coarse cotton dress. But a gay red handkerchief covered her black hair, and heavy copper rings hung from her nose and ears.
The song stopped suddenly as she saw Joel. Then recognizing her master's guest, she smiled at him so broadly that he could see her pretty white teeth.
Joel hardly knew what to say at this unexpected encounter, but bethought himself to ask the way to the sheep-folds and the watch-tower. "It is a long way there," said the woman, doubtfully; Joel flushed as he felt her black eyes scanning his misshapen form.
Just then Sarah appeared in the door, and the maid repeated the question to her mistress.
"To be sure," she said. "You must go out and see our shepherds with their flocks. We have a great many employed just now, on all the surrounding hills. Rhoda, call your son, and bid him bring hither the donkey that he always drives to market."
The woman left her churning, and presently came back with a boy about Joel's age, leading a donkey with only one ear.
Joel knew what that meant. At some time in its life the poor beast had strayed into some neighbor's field, and the owner of the field had been at liberty to cut off an ear in punishment.
The boy that led him wore a long shirt of rough hair-cloth. His feet and legs were brown and tanned. A shock of reddish sunburned hair was the only covering for his head. There was a squint in one eye, and his face was freckled.
He made an awkward obeisance to his mistress.
"Buz," she said, "this young lad is your master's guest. Take him out and show him the flocks and herds, and the sheep-folds. He has never seen anything of shepherd life, so be careful to do his pleasure. Stay!" she added to Joel. "You will not have time to visit them all before the mid-day meal, so I will give you a lunch, and you can enjoy an entire day in the fields."
As the two boys started down the hill, Joel stole a glance at his companion. "What a stupid-looking fellow!" he thought; "I doubt if he knows anything more than this sleepy beast I am riding. I wonder if he enjoys any of this beautiful world around him. How glad I am that I am not in his place."
Buz, trudging along in the dust, glanced at the little cripple on the donkey's back with an inward shiver.
"What a dreadful lot his must be," he thought. "How glad I am that I am not like he is!"
It was not very long till the shyness began to wear off, and Joel found that the stupid shepherd lad had a very busy brain under his shock of tangled hair. His eyes might squint, but they knew just where to look in the bushes for the little hedge-sparrow's nest. They could take unerring aim, too, when he sent the smooth sling-stones whizzing from the sling he carried.
"How far can you shoot with it?" asked Joel.
For answer Buz looked all around for some object on which to try his skill; then he pointed to a hawk slowly circling overhead. Joel watched him fit a smooth pebble into his sling; he had no thought that the boy could touch it at such a distance. The stone whizzed through the air like a bullet, and the bird dropped several yards ahead of them.
"See!" said Buz, as he ran to pick it up, and display it proudly. "I struck it in the head."
Joel looked at him with increasing respect. "That must have been the kind of sling that King David killed the giant with," he said, handing it back after a careful examination.
"King David!" repeated Buz, dully, "seems to me I have heard of him, sometime or other; but I don't know about the giant."
"Why where have you been all your life?" cried Joel, in amazement. "I thought everybody knew about that. Did you never go to a synagogue?"
Buz shook his bushy head. "They don't have synagogues in these parts. The master calls us in and reads to us on the Sabbath; but I always get sleepy when I sit right still, and so I generally get behind somebody and go to sleep. The shepherds talk to each other a good deal about such things, I am never with them though. I spend all my time running errands."
Shocked at such ignorance, Joel began to tell the shepherd king's life with such eloquence that Buz stopped short in the road to listen.
Seeing this the donkey stood still also, wagged its one ear, and went to sleep. But Buz listened, wider awake than he had ever been before in his life.
The story was a favorite one with Joel, and he put his whole soul into it.
"Who told you that?" asked Buz, taking a long breath when the interesting tale was finished.
"Why I read it myself!" answered Joel.
"Oh, can you read?" asked Buz, looking at Joel in much the same way that Joel had looked at him after he killed the hawk. "I do not see how anybody can. It puzzles me how people can look at all those crooked black marks and call them rivers and flocks and things.
