cast out devils, Joseph replied that he had, but it would take some time
to tell the exordium. Whereupon Ecanus remembered that other patients
waited for his attendance and took his leave, warning Joseph before
leaving against the danger of tiring his father, a thing that Joseph
promised not to do; but as soon as the door closed after the physician
Dan began to beg so earnestly for stories that Joseph could not do else
than tell him of the miracle he had witnessed. Better to submit, he
thought, than to agitate his father by refusal; and he began this
narrative; the morning of the storm, which they would not have succeeded
in weathering had it not been for the intervention of the angel. Jesus
and some of the disciples, including Joseph, had set their sail for the
Gadarene coasts; and finding a landing-place by a shore seeming
desolate, they proceeded into the country; and while seeking a
sufficient number to exhort and to teach, their search led them past
some broken ruins, shards of an old castle, apparently tenantless. They
were about to pass it without examination when a wailing voice from one
of the turrets brought them to a standstill. They were not at first
certain whether the wailing sound was the voice of the wind or a human
voice, but they had hearkened and with difficulty had separated the
doleful sound into: woe! woe! woe! unto thee Jerusalem, woe! woe! It
sounds to me, Peter said, like one that is making a mock of thee,
Master. Having heard that thou foretellest woe to Chorazin---- But
Judas, seeing a cloud gathering on Peter's face, nudged Peter, and the
twain went up together and some minutes after returned with a half-naked
creature, an outcast whom they had found crouching like a jackal in a
hole among the stones, one clearly possessed by many devils. Now as all
were in wonder what his history might be, a swineherd passing by at the
time told them how the poor, naked creature would take a beating or a
gift of food for his singing with the same gentle grace. The words had
hardly passed the swineherd's lips than the possessed began to sing: