sinned? Joseph repeated. How did we sin? Have you forgotten, Azariah
answered, that it was arranged that we should spend the day reading the
Scriptures, and we've spent it talking to shepherds? Was that a sin?
Joseph asked. We can read the Scriptures to-morrow; if the day be
clouded and rain comes, we can read them indoors. If the day be clouded,
Azariah replied smiling. But was not thy life dedicated to Samuel? Thou
hast forgotten him. But the world is God's world. Joseph answered that
he had forgotten his vow, and all that evening, in spite of Azariah's
gentleness with him, he was pursued by the memory of the sin he had
committed. In Samuel's own city he had broken his vow! And Azariah heard
the boy blubbering in the darkness that night.




CHAP. III.


He should not have interrupted the manifestations of joy at his return
with: when may I go to Arimathea again? And his second question was
hardly less indiscreet: why did we leave Arimathea? His father answered:
because it suited us to do so; and Joseph withdrew to Rachel who was
never gruff with him. But despite her bias in favour of all he said and
did she reproved him, saying that he should not ask as soon as he
returned home when he was going away again. I am glad in a way, Granny,
but there's no forest here. Dan left the room, and the boy would tell
no more but burst into tears, asking what he had done to make Father so
angry. Rachel could not tell him with safety, and Joseph, thinking that
perhaps something unpleasant had happened to his father in the forest (a
wolf may have bitten him there), spoke of the high rock on the next