The pilgrims plodded on in the heat. Companies of soldiers with glittering arms, merchants with laden mules jingling their bells, groups of ragged thieves and bold beggars met and jostled the peaceful travellers on the road. Once a little band of robbers, riding across the valley to the land of Moab, turned from a distance toward the Nazarenes, circled swiftly around them like hawks, whistling and calling shrilly to one another. But there was small booty in that country caravan, and the men who guarded it looked strong and tough; so the robbers whirled away as swiftly as they had come. The Boy had stood close to his father in this moment of danger, looking on with surprise at the actions of the horsemen. “What did those riders want?” he asked. “All we have,” answered the man. “But it is very little,” said the Boy. “Nothing but our clothes and some food for our journey. If they were hungry, why did they not ask of us?” The man laughed. “These are not the kind that ask,” he said, “they are the kind that take--what they will and when they can.” “I do not like them,” said the Boy. “Their horses were beautiful, but their faces were hateful--like a jackal that I saw--in the gulley behind Nazareth one night. His eyes were burning red as fire. Those men had fires inside of them.” For the rest of that afternoon he walked more quietly and with thoughtful looks, as if he were pondering the case of men who looked like jackals and had flames within them. At sunset, when the camp was made outside the gates of the new city of Archelaus, on a hillock among the corn-fields, he came to his mother with his hands full of the long lavender and rose and pale-blue spathes of the gladiolus-lilies. “Look, mother,” he cried, “are they not fine--like the clothes of a king?” “What do you know of kings?” she answered, smiling. “These are only wild lilies of the field. But a great king, like Solomon, has robes of thick silk, and jewels on his neck and his fingers, and a big crown of gold on his head.” “But that must be very heavy,” said the Boy, tossing his head lightly. “It must tire him to wear a crown-thing and such thick robes. Besides, I think the lilies are really prettier. They look just as if they were glad to grow in the field.” The third night they camped among the palm-groves and heavy-odored gardens of Jericho, where Herod's splendid palace rose above the trees. The fourth day they climbed the wild, steep, robber-haunted road from the Jordan valley to the highlands of Judea, and so came at sundown to their camp-ground among friends and neighbors on the closely tented slope of the Mount of Olives, over against Jerusalem.