to the president a man some twenty years older and he wondered at the time how a mere shepherd from the hills could talk on an equality as if they were friends with the president the shepherd he now heard was an but he lived among the hills and joseph remembered the striped shirt the sheep skin and the long stride his memory continued to and he recalled with singular distinctness and pleasure the fine broad brow upwards � a noble arch he said to himself � the distant as stars and the sadness in his voice soft and low but with a cry in it and he remembered how their eyes met and it seemed to joseph that he read in the shepherd s eyes a look of recognition and and now as he walked from the to the he remembered how all one night after that meeting dreams of a mutual destiny him how he slept and was awakened by visions that fled from his mind as he strove to recall them but was this young shepherd the one that saw john in the it cannot be else he said the brook to himself but whither was gone did the brethren know and if they did know would they tell him it was against the rule to put questions only the president could tell him and he dared not go to the president yet consult somebody he must and a few days afterwards he got leave again to visit whom he found lying in his cave sick not very sick though having eaten nothing for nearly two days he begged joseph to fetch him a little water from the rock which joseph did after having drunk a little the seemed to revive and joseph related how he missed on the bank and had no tidings of him except that he was gone into the desert to but the desert is large and i know not which side of the lake he has chosen to which answered john is in the get thee and repent on which he reached out his hand to his store of and while a few he added the is greater than and he is still get thee to at this joseph took offence and returned to the with the intention of his teaching but he was again so possessed of that he could not keep his mind on the lesson before him a pupil was often forced to put a question to him in a loud voice and perhaps to repeat it before joseph s sick reverie was sufficiently broken for him to an answer the pain of the effort to return to them was so apparent in his face that the pupils began to be sorry for him and kept up a fire of questions to save him from the melancholy to which he lately seemed to have become liable the cause of his grief they could not guess but he was not sure they did not suspect the cause and so the classes in which he heretofore took so much pleasure came to be dreaded by him every moment except those in which he sat in dreams was a penance and a pain and at last he pleaded illness and took his class leaving joseph to wander as far as he liked from the which had become hateful to him a the brook he was often met in the public gardens in watch ing the people going by vaguely interested and vaguely wearied by the thoughts that their different shows called up in his mind and he was always painfully conscious that nothing mattered that the great void would never be filled up again and that time would not restore to him a single desire or hope nothing matters he often said to himself as he sat drawing patterns in the gravel with his stick yet he had no will to die only to believe he was the victim of some powerful influence one day as he sat watching the wind in the palm trees it seemed to him that this influence this demon was always moving behind his life disturbing and setting himself to destroy any project that joseph might form another day it seemed to joseph that the demon cast a net over him and that � entangled in the � he was being drawn somebody spoke to him and he awoke so that the gossip could hardly keep himself from laughing outright if the end of the world were at hand let the end come to pass he said but he did not go to john for he knew not why only that he could not rouse himself and it was not till it came to be in that a prophet was gone to egypt to learn greek that he awoke sufficiently to ask why a prophet needed greek the answer he got was that the new doctrine required a knowledge of greek greek being a world wide language and the doctrine being also world wide as there was but one god for all the world it was reasonable to suppose that every man might hope for salvation be he jew or it seemed to joseph that this doctrine could only from the young shepherd he had met in the and he joined a and for fifteen days dreamed of the meeting that awaited him at the end of the journey � and of the delightful instruction in greek that he was going to impart to the heights of mount turned his thoughts backward the brook only for a moment and he continued his dream of continuing without interruption along the shell strewn shores of the sea of on and on into the till he stepped from the into the great in without exactly expecting to find waiting for him in the street he had dreamed of meeting him somewhere in the city he was sure he would recognise 