The Brook Kerith | Page 4

not finding him
awake. But that could not be, for if the prophet had come he would
have awakened him as he had done before. His ancestor had not come
again: a reasonable thing to suppose, for when the dead return to the
earth they do so with much pain and difficulty; and if the living, whom
they come to instruct, cannot keep their eyes open, the poor dead
wander back and do not try to come between their descendants and
their fate again.
But I will keep awake, he said, and resorted to all sorts of devices,
keeping up a repetition of a little phrase: he will come to-night when
the moon is full; and lying with one leg hanging out of bed; and these
proving unavailing he strewed his bed with crumbs. But no ancestor
appeared, and little by little he relinquished hope of ever being able to
summon Samuel to his bedside, and accepted as an explanation of his
persistent absence that Samuel had performed his duty by coming once
to visit him and would not come again unless some new necessity
should arise. It was then that the conviction began to mount into his
brain that he must learn all that his grandmother could tell him about
Saul and David, and learning from her that they had been a great
trouble to Samuel he resolved never to allow a thought into his mind
that the prophet would deem unworthy. To become worthy of his
ancestor was now his aim, and when he heard that Samuel was the

author of two sacred books it seemed to him that his education had
been neglected: for he had not yet been taught to read. Another step in
his advancement was the discovery that the language his father, his
granny and himself spoke was not the language spoken by Samuel, and
every day he pressed his grandmother to tell him why the Jews had lost
their language in Babylon, till he exhausted the old woman's
knowledge and she said: well now, Son, if you want to hear any more
about Babylon you must ask your father, for I have told you all I know.
And Joseph waited eagerly for his father to come home, and plagued
him to tell him a story.
But after a long day spent in the counting-house his father was often
too tired to take him on his knee and instruct him, for Joseph's curiosity
was unceasing and very often wearisome. Now, Joseph, his father said,
you will learn more about these things when you are older. And why
not now? he asked, and his grandmother answered that it was change of
air that he wanted and not books; and they began to speak of the fierce
summer that had taken the health out of all of them, and of how
necessary it was for a child of that age to be sent up to the hills.
Dan looked into his son's face, and Rachel seemed to be right. A thin,
wan little face, that the air of the hills will brighten, he said; and he
began at once to make arrangements for Joseph's departure for a hill
village, saying that the pastoral life of the hills would take his mind off
Samuel, Hebrew and Babylon. Rachel was doubtful if the shepherds
would absorb Joseph's mind as completely as his father thought. She
hoped, however, that they would. As soon as he hears the sound of the
pipe, his father answered. A prophecy this was, for while Joseph was
resting after the fatigue of the journey, he was awakened suddenly by a
sound he had never heard before, and one that interested him strangely.
His nurse told him that the sound he was hearing was a shepherd's pipe.
The shepherd plays and the flock follows, she said. And when may I
see the flock coming home with the shepherd? he asked. To-morrow
evening, she answered, and the time seemed to him to loiter, so eager
was he to see the flocks returning and to watch the she-goat milked.
And in the spring as his strength came back he followed the shepherds

and heard from them many stories of wolves and dogs, and from a
shepherd lad, whom he had chosen as a companion, he acquired
knowledge of the plumage and the cries and the habits of birds, and
whither he was to seek their nests: it had become his ambition to
possess all the wild birds' eggs, one that was easily satisfied till he
came to the egg of the cuckoo, which he sought in vain, hearing of it
often, now here, now there, till at last he and the shepherd lad ventured
into a dangerous country in search of it and remained there till news of
their