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By Root 538 0

bronze that had been Thacia's latest gift, peering so earnestly that she had not even heard him come in. There had been something in her face, a searching and a wistfulness that still haunted him. Sometimes, when he talked, she did not seem to hear him at all, but seemed to be listening intently for some expected sound. Often there was a dreaming look in her blue eyes. Twice when the first patter of early rain had passed like footsteps along the street outside, she had flown to the garden door and flung it open and stood looking out into the dark damp garden. Girls were strange creatures. Would Thacia understand all this? Perhaps it was only his imagining, but it stirred in him an odd uneasiness that he could not put into words.

There was another satisfaction in these days. As Daniel grew confident of the skill in his own hands, his work became a source of pleasure. It was satisfying to give a villager a pair of hinges for his house, and to know that they were not only strong and well balanced, but exactly matched and pleasing to look at as well. He became aware that something more than usefulness could take shape under his hammer, and he began to experiment.

One sultry afternoon when the work was slack, he picked from the floor a bit of bronze which had dropped from a molten mass. Seeing its dull shine between his fingers, he had an idea. He heated it carefully, pulled it from the fire with the smallest tongs, and tapped it gently with Simon's finest hammer. After several tries he achieved a stroke delicate enough so that it would not flatten the small lump, and presently he managed to beat out a fine wire. He heated it again, and twisted it between his fingers, and watched it slowly take the shape of a tiny slender bow, no longer than his little finger. For a moment he stared at it with pure pleasure. Then he had a further inspiration. He rolled out and sharpened a slender bronze pin which could pass down like an arrow between the bow and the fine wire of its string, so that the bow became a brooch such as he had seen the city folk wear to fasten their cloaks.

Then he hid his experiment away, half ashamed of it and half proud. He would keep it to remind him of his purpose.

He trains my hands for war,

so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze...

He thought again of Jesus, and his hopes flared anew. Surely this man, like David of old, had the strength of God in him. If he willed, he could bend the bow 'of bronze. But was Jesus training his hands for war? Daniel was not sure. He must go back again that night to the garden in Bethsaida.

For Daniel the month of Ab was a time of waiting. It was only afterwards that he remembered these days as a time of quietness and hope.

16

I'LL DO ANYTHING, Daniel. You know that—anything!" Joel's voice shook with earnestness. His eyes in the flickering lamplight were fixed on his friend's face. The three sat crouched in the narrow passageway of Joel's home.

Earlier that day Daniel had received a summons by messenger from Rosh. He had climbed to the cave, and then, after a brief conference, had gone straight to the city. Shortly before dark Joel and Thacia had crept through the passageway to join him.

Daniel brought with him the long awaited orders from Rosh to Joel. At first, waiting in the dark passageway, Daniel had battled with his own jealousy. That Joel should have the first chance to act, while he himself, the one who had brought Joel in as a recruit, should stand aside and wait! But now he was beginning to see the thing reasonably. This was only the beginning.

"Rosh needs some information," he told his eager friend. "You're the only one who can get it, Joel. You know your way around the city and everyone is used to seeing you. None of the rest of us could get near."

"What does Rosh want? I'll get it, whatever it is!"

Daniel told him, his voice echoing the contempt with which Galileans always spoke of the tetrarch—the half-Jew, Herod Antipas, who had been appointed to rule over them—and of the extravagant city he had built on the sea. "Herod is entertaining