When Obil came home, as the boy grew on, it came to be that he always took the boy on his knee, first breath, and asked for his tales of the heroes. And the boy loved to tell them as he stumbled after his father in the furrow, or lay with him in the cool evening under the vine at the door. Every one marveled at this child as he recited long strings of the sayings of the sages, and prayers and psalms, and at the star-eyed reverence with which he would touch the name of the Most High on the little folded parchment that Miriam had placed on the lowly door-post of their home. Not only to his father but to every one the boy loved to tell his burning tales of the heroes and the prophets, until often it was whispered, “Perhaps God will raise up even this child, the son of Obil, to be liberator of Israel,--who can tell?” Perhaps, all unguessed by themselves, this hope was the reason that, to those who knew the little family of three, it seemed a strange and evil thing, certainly unblessed of God, that so suddenly and silently each year Obil should go away out of sight. As for Obil, he had cared nothing for these secret whisperings. He never had struggled against the call of the desert in those old days, but had yielded in absolute joy. Each year he knew that far to the South he would find old Abdul in the same spot in the wilderness bordering the desert, waiting at his tent door, the same horizon before him silhouetted with the same three palms (one lop-eared), the same remote, tawny line of low hills against the beryl sky, like some vast lion’s long, lithe contour slipping through grass. His horse’s harness would click dustily as it slipped down. Abdul would utter no word, Obil no word. There would be a fire of good coals and broiled meat ready--clean--such as was fit for a Son of the Law.