So, though they looked at him from where they sat and two or three asked each other if he were asleep or merely weary, he was left alone.

One by one they who halted took up their journey again and the figure in the grass lay still.
Finally near the noon hour there came from the summit of a hill overhanging the road, a high, wild, youthful yell that cut with startling distinctness through the dead level of human communication on the highway.

Each of the travelers below looked up to see a young shepherd in sheepskins with long-blowing stiff crinkled locks flying back from a dusky face, with eyes soft and shining as those of some wild thing.

Around him eddied a mob of sheep as wild as he, and a Natolian dog raced hither and thither in a cloud of dust, rounding the edge of the flock and shaping it to the advance of the young faun that mastered it.
"Sheep! by the prophets!" one of the sedate Jews exclaimed.
"The only flock in existence in Judea, I venture!" his companion declared.
"And so hopelessly doomed to Roman possession that it can not be called in existence." "Heigh! Hello! Young David!" one of the younger men called up to the shepherd.

"Does Titus pay you for minding his mutton ?" "Salute, neighbors!" another shouted.