The Maccabee looked out at the door, away from the full eyes of his young host.
He was touched presently, and a cup of milk was silently put to his lips.

He drank and turning himself with effort fell asleep.
When he awoke again, after many hours, it was night.

In the door with his head dropped back between his shoulders gazing up at the sky overhead, sat the boy.
"Where," the Maccabee began, "are the rest of you ?" The boy turned around quickly, and answered with all seriousness.
"I am all here." "Did you," the Maccabee began again, after silence, "care for me alone ?" "There has been no one here but us," the boy said, hesitating at the symptoms of gratitude in the Maccabee's voice.
"Us ?" "You and me." After another silence, the Maccabee laughed weakly.
"It requires two to constitute 'us' and I am, by all signs, not a whole one!" "But you will be in a few days," the boy declared admiringly.

"You are an excellent sick man." The Maccabee looked at him meditatively.
"I am merely perverse," he said darkly; "I knew it would be so much pleasure to my murderer to know that I died, duly." The shepherd repressed his curiosity, as the best thing for his patient's welfare, and suggested another subject rather disjointedly.
"I have been thinking," he said, "about Jerusalem.

I was there once upon a time." "Once!" the Maccabee said.