was like a shadow in the water, having form but no substance, and so it is with all food to me since. Though I behold it, handle it, I put a shadow to my lips. Yet every day do I prepare my meal, hoping the curse removed, and knowing always it shall not be until he come again.” The soldier broke into a roar of laughter. “Until he come again!” he cried, “until he come again! O, a jockeyed Jew, a poor deluded Jew!” He was so gloriously tickled that he had to gasp and choke himself into sobriety. “Harkee, goatherd,” he said presently; “there was a day, not long past, in Jerusalem--a lamentable day for thee. It thundered--gods, how it thundered, rattling the Place of Skulls! I ought to remember, seeing I was on duty there. Nazareth was it, now? Why, to be sure--I know my letters, and it was writ plain enough and high enough. Jesus of Nazareth, who saved others, but could not save himself--that was it--one of three rogues condemned. Well, he laid an embargo on thee, did he? You see this spear----” He paused, in the very act of lifting his javelin, and sat staring stupidly at it. Its point was tipped with crimson. “The rising sun!” muttered the goatherd, and, getting suddenly to his feet, stood gazing seawards. The soldier came and stood beside him. The whole wide valley, while they spoke, had opened to the morning like a rose, the clustered hills its petals, its calyx the deep lake, the lights upon it dewdrops shining at its heart. And there upon the dim waters, swinging close inshore, was a fisherman’s boat, its crew gathering in an empty net. Now the two on the hill stood too remote to distinguish sounds or faces, while the conformation of the rocks hid the shore from their view. But of a sudden, as they looked, the forms in the boat started erect, and, all standing in a huddled group, appeared to gaze landwards. And instantly, as if they had received therefrom some direction, they seized and cast their net the other side of the boat and drew on it, and the watchers saw by their straining muscles that the net was full. Perceiving which, one of the fishermen, a burly fellow, quitted his hold of the cords, and, leaping into the water, floundered for the shore and disappeared. “What now?” said the soldier. “Do they spy and seek us?” He muttered vacantly, and glanced again at his spearhead, and shook the haft impatiently. But the sunrise would not be detached from it. Now the goatherd ran to a cleft which commanded the shore below, and, glaring a moment, returned swiftly, his face alight. “Rabboni,” he said excitedly, “it is the man of Nazareth himself come back, and he ascendeth the hill towards us, and the spell will be removed from me so that I shall taste fish once more.”