CHAPTER II. A SPARROW FALLETH.
The Galilean, having thus made for himself an enemy, plunged into one of the narrow streets leading toward the temple. He was still breathing deep, and thrust his pilgrim’s staff fiercely into the red dust of the gloomy thoroughfare. “Who am I that I should follow a prophet?” he demanded of himself angrily. “ ‘If thine enemy smite thee smite not thou again,’ saith my Master; and behold I have smitten a stranger and one born blind. Verily, I am glad that the Nazarene did not see me do it. Hold, I had forgotten the boy!” He stopped short and presently spied Tor’s small head running over with sunburnt curls peeping out from the shelter of a projecting archway. The boy’s wild, bright eyes met his own defiantly.
“Thou’lt not catch me a second time, Galilean.”
The man’s white teeth flashed in a quick answering smile. “He who is once bitten by a wolf’s whelp in future remembers and is content.”
“Did I bite thee to bleeding, Galilean?”
“Aye, verily, look thou at my hand.”
Tor laughed aloud. “It is well,” he said briefly.
“Nay, it is not well. ’Tis an evil thing for a child to bite like a dog. Wilt thou eat with me, small one?”
“I bite like a dog because I hate like a dog and hunger like a dog,” replied Tor slowly. “I stole from the beggar, and thou didst take the money from me by force. Which is better? Nay, Galilean, I will not eat with thee.”
The stranger sat down upon a stone with an air of indifference. “I am hungry,” he said, and, producing a brown loaf and a handful of olives from his pouch, began to eat.
Little by little the child crept nearer. Presently he stretched out one puny hand and snatched a fragment of bread which the man carelessly let fall.
“Ah, thou?” said the Galilean, with an air of surprise, and let fall another bit. Later he placed a large piece of the bread on the stone at his side and looked away at the tops of the houses.
“Does the hand that bleeds hurt thee over much, stranger?” inquired a small voice at his elbow.
“Does a hand that is wounded to bleeding hurt?” repeated the Galilean gravely. “Verily, the smart is grievous; art satisfied?”
“Why didst thou hold me when I would not?” inquired the child. “Was my doing any business of thine?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Nay,” he replied doggedly, “it was not. Moreover, I should have been attending to the beam in mine own eye. I have been taught to forbear quarreling—even for a just cause. I am already punished, and shall be punished again. ‘Bray a fool in a mortar,’ sayeth the wise Solomon, ‘yet will his folly not depart from him.’ Such a fool am I.”
“Who told thee it was an evil thing to fight, Galilean?” asked the boy curiously. He was sitting quite confidently now at the stranger’s side, munching bread and olives. “I say it is not evil—that is, unless one is beaten. Then, indeed, it is evil. But one may always curse another. I have learned divers strong curses—ay, I am able to curse a man or a beast in many tongues.”
“I have a Master, one Jesus of Nazareth,” said the Galilean slowly. “He tells me that I must allow a man who has smitten me on one cheek to smite the other also.”
“Of course, after thou hast smitten thine enemy soundly, he will smite thee again, if he is able. Is thy Master a gladiator?”
“God forbid!” murmured the Galilean. He stared thoughtfully at the famished child, who was devouring the last crumbs of bread. “Art thou filled?” he asked.
Tor shrugged his thin shoulders. “Is the dry bed of Kedron filled with a single shower?” he inquired tersely. “I have eaten. I—” He stopped short and fixed his bright eyes on the Galilean’s hurt hand, which he had thrust into a fold of his tunic. “Let me see it,” he added timidly.
“Wherefore; wouldst thou again whet thy teeth on me?”
Tor shook his head. “It hurts me, also, now that I have eaten thy bread,” he faltered. Then to the immense astonishment of the man, he burst into a passion of weeping, his rough head bowed upon his scarred knees. An evil-looking dog which had been hungrily watching the scene from an angle in the wall skulked rapidly toward the child, and thrust his lean carcass between the two; the Galilean sprang to his feet with a muttered imprecation and threatening up-raised staff.
“Stop!” cried Tor, in sudden fury. “’Tis my dog. ’Tis Baladan. Thou shalt not strike him!”
The man looked on in horrified amazement while the child wound his thin arms about the shaggy neck of the brute, murmuring gently, “See, here is yet a bit of bread for thee, good Baladan. Eat, my friend, eat, it is good bread.”
The dog licked the child’s bare feet and whined his delight. “Didst thou not know, boy, that dogs are unclean and evil brutes?” demanded the Galilean with an air of profound disgust. “Nay, thou art thyself unclean and evil, and I must away to my Master.” He turned his back upon the child and strode away, his head bent, his eyes fixed gloomily upon the ground.
Tor watched him furtively. Then, with a word to the dog, which obediently slunk back into his chosen lair, he trotted noiselessly after the man. “I will see where the stranger goes,” he told himself.
The child had not followed the Galilean far when the dull rumbling of chariot-wheels and the sharp crack of a whip warned him out of the narrow thoroughfare. He flattened himself against a convenient wall and stared greedily at the sight. This could be no less than a Roman official of high rank; the boy knew it right well; his eyes roved eagerly over the rich appointments of the chariot, and fastened inquiringly on the frowning face of the man who guided the plunging horses. A second man stood at the driver’s side, a man wearing a tunic and toga richly bordered with the imperial purple.
Tor drew his breath sharply in pleased astonishment. Then he saw that the chariot was hotly pursued by a crowd of gamins like himself.
“’Tis the Roman Pilate himself,” he chuckled, “and perchance he will presently cast out coin like grain from the fat pouch at his girdle.”
A shrill cry burst from the child’s lips as he joined the rabble at the chariot-wheels. To run, to shout, to feel the glad thud of the falling coin; to wrestle fiercely in the dust, to arise victorious, to eat and drink the fruits of conquest—this was no new thing to Tor. And what, indeed, was the random sting of a Roman lash—even when it chanced to fall on naked limbs or shoulders—to the glory of the chase?
The man who held the whip plied it vigorously before and behind with loud imprecations in an unknown tongue, while he who wore the imperial purple stared frowningly into vacancy, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
Tor’s swift feet gained on the chariot. “Hail, great Pilate!” he shouted impudently, “art deaf? art blind? art palsied? Give us now of the temple treasure! Ay—give! give!”
The Roman’s dull eyes flashed baleful fire. The fact that he had attempted to seize large sums from the temple treasuries, and that the Jews hated him for it, was no secret in Jerusalem. But must the very gamins of the street taunt him with the fact? He snatched the lash from the driver and plied it himself with a practiced hand.
Tor fell back with a shriek of keenest agony.
The chariot and the rabble swept on and disappeared, leaving the child writhing on the pavement like a wounded animal.
The whip, fringed cruelly with glistening barbs of steel, had lashed him full across the eyes.