It once occurred to them to try their luck with the Gadarenes, and it was in returning from their coasts one evening that Peter's boat was caught in a great storm and that Joseph was met by one of his father's servants as he jumped ashore. The man had come to tell him that if he wished to see his father alive he must hasten to Magdala, and Joseph glared at him dumbfounded, for he had suspected all along that he had little or no right at all to leave his father for Jesus. I did not know I was like this, he blurted out to himself. And as much to silence his accusing conscience as anything else he questioned the stupid messenger, asking him if his father had seen a physician, and if the physician had held out any hopes of a recovery. But the thin and halting account which was all the messenger could give only increased Joseph's alarm, and it was with much difficulty that he learnt from him that the master had brought some walnuts to the parrots, and just after giving a nut to the green parrot had cried out to Tobias that a great pain had come into his head. Joseph dug his heels into his ass's side and cried to the messenger: and then? The messenger answered that the pain in the back of his father's head had become so great that he had begun to reel about, overthrowing one of the parrots on its perch. The parrot flew at master, thinking he had done it---- Never mind the parrot, Joseph replied angrily, confusing the messenger, who told him that the master had entered the house on Tobias' arm, and had sat down to supper but had eaten nothing to speak of. None of us dared to go to bed that night, the messenger continued. We sat up, expecting every moment somebody to come down from the room overhead to tell us that the master was dead. The next part of the messenger's story was like a tangled skein, and Joseph half heard and half understood that the great physician that had come from Tiberias had said that he must awaken the master out of the swoon and at any cost. He kept bawling at him, the messenger said. Bawling at him, Joseph repeated after the messenger, and the messenger repeated the words, bawling at him, and saying that the physician said the master's swoon was like a wall and that he must get him to hear him somehow. He said the effort would cost your father, Sir, a great deal, but he must get him to hear him. The story as the servant related it seemed incredible, but he reflected that servants' stories are always incredible, and Joseph learned with increasing wonder that Dan had heard the physician and sat up in bed and spoken reasonably, but had fallen back again unconscious, and that the physician on leaving him said that they must get his mouth open somehow and pour a spoonful of milk into his mouth, and call upon him as loudly as they could to swallow. What physician have they sent for? Joseph asked the messenger, but he could not remember the name.