¶AND JOHN ANSWERED HIM, SAYING, MASTER, WE SAW ONE CASTING OUT DEVILS IN THY NAME, AND HE FOLLOWETH NOT US: AND WE FORBAD HIM, BECAUSE HE FOLLOWETH NOT US. ¶BUT JESUS SAID, FORBID HIM NOT: FOR THERE IS NO MAN WHICH SHALL DO A MIRACLE IN MY NAME, THAT CAN LIGHTLY SPEAK EVIL OF ME. ¶FOR HE THAT IS NOT AGAINST US IS ON OUR PART.--MARK IX: 38-40. Women called their children to hide under mantles, or skurried with them to the shelter of dark huts, as Obil came riding up into Carmel on that day of the Lord’s Great Year in Galilee; Obil, and three others, horses and accoutrements and their own bodies steaming yet from the long rush through salt surf down from Akka to Haifa and through the clean-smelling waters of the yellow Kishon where it puts into the sea. What would he care--to ride a child down--that Obil? He would laugh to see it wildly flying from before his horse’s hoofs. Every one knew this, from Ptolemais to Jerusalem and even beyond, down into the wilderness, and over across Jordan. Some people said that Obil served the evil priests--which was far from the truth; others, that he was a tool of Herod, more silent than lightnings out of summer heat, and as sure to kill. It was, besides, insisted with whisperings and shudderings that he served only himself, and that somewhere deep among the awful crags by the Salt Sea a wondrous treasure sparkled, hidden by the red hand of the robber, Obil. Yet there were some, away out in the hill country beyond Hebron, as you go toward Beersheba, who could tell of years when Obil had tilled a few fields there under the kindly sun and had kept cattle of his own on the gentle hills. With his young wife Miriam he had paid tithes and kept the pleasant feasts. In not one humble home did the Sabbath candles ever burn brighter. No one’s son had been brought up with more loving regard for the plain things of the law than the child of Obil and Miriam, from the very first. These things they knew in Hebron. But there was in Obil--here the heads came closer together under the mantles--in Obil there was a Strain of wild desert blood, strong in his race from the time of the first Obil, the Ishmaelite, Keeper of King David’s Camels, and master of the great caravans that went from great Hebron down to far Havilah. Since he was a child, when his father took him on a chance journey far to the South, the desert-lust had come upon him year by year, driving him from his home till the lust was satisfied and he could return. While he was gone, Miriam his wife, the soft-eyed, the meek one, tended the doves, the lambs, the goats and cattle. Faithfully she taught their little son of the prophets, and of all the heroes of his race; of the great priest Simon; of Judas the Hammer, and his army.