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Daniel looked down. He saw a glimmer of white on the ground and stooped to it. Bread. He held it in his hand. Farther on he saw another crust, and another. Bread? For all these people? People all over the hillside? There must be thousands.

"Wait a minute!" He ran after the man. "Where did the bread come from?"

"How do I know? All I know is they sent back word for us to sit down. Then someone passed me bread."

The shouting was growing more frenzied. "Let him be king!" they screamed. "He is our Deliverer! Down with Rome!"

Still Daniel could not see Jesus. He began to push his way through the jostling bodies. If only Joel were here, he thought with sharp regret. The end of all their waiting, and Joel was not there to see it!

"Daniel!" Out of the darkness came a familiar voice.

"Simon!" The two friends grasped each other's arms. "Where is he, Simon?"

"He has gone."

"Gone! They're going to crown him king!"

"I know. But he has gone. We pleaded with him. But he told us to hold back the crowd, and then he went, with Simon and James and John."

"Where?"

"Back into the hills somewhere."

"We must go after him! Hurry!"

"We will not find him. He said that no one was to follow him."

Daniel rocked back from the words as from a wall. Baffled, he stood quivering, his eyes straining ahead. Where could he look in the darkness? Numb with disappointment, he stared at his friend. Then he realized that all around him, like a bonfire that had leaped too high, the exaltation was dying down. Shouts of joy were giving way to cries of anger. Like Daniel, the people could not believe that Jesus had gone. He must be hiding, waiting to be coaxed. Here and there fierce sudden arguments broke out. If the man wanted to be king, why didn't he stand up and act like a king? Women threaded through the crowd, searching out their men and urging them to go home. Slowly the tide turned back down the hill.

"Come," said Simon quietly. "You can spend the night with me."

"Simon—why?" Daniel burst out. "They would have given him a crown!"

"I don't know. Perhaps it is not time."

"When will there ever be a better time?"

"That is for him to choose."

"But will he? What does he want? What sort of man is he, anyway?"

Simon looked back at him. In the darkness his eyes suddenly blazed. "I believe he is the Messiah, sent from God," he said.

Daniel felt a chill along his spine. "Has he said so?"

"Not to me. Perhaps to those three. I think Simon knows."

"Then why would he not be king?"

"I have told you, I don't know."

"If he is the Messiah, how soon will he lead us against the enemy?"

Simon walked on for a time without answering. Finally he spoke. "He will never lead us against Rome, Daniel. I have given up all hope of that."

The quiet words had the force of a blow. Daniel had his answer at last. Joel had tried to tell him, and Thacia. Even Jesus himself. Now Simon had confirmed the doubt that all these months had blocked the way between him and the man from Nazareth.

"Then why do you stay with him?" All the boy's bitterness broke through the reproach.

"Where else could I go?" Simon answered.

"What has he offered you that is worth more than Israel's freedom?"

"He has offered me the kingdom."

Daniel's anger was rising. "When do you think you'll have this kingdom?"

"You will not understand this," said Simon. "In a way, I have it already."

"That's fine!" the boy's scorn was close to tears. "You have the kingdom! You can shut your eyes while all around you—"

"I have not shut my eyes," said Simon. "I know well enough that nothing in Israel is changed. But I know that it will be, even if I never live to sec it with my own eyes."

"Listen to me, Daniel," he went on. "You've seen him caring for those people—the ones so low that no one, not I or anyone else, cared what happened to them. When I see that, I know that the God of Israel has not forgotten us. Or why would He have sent Jesus to them, instead of to the rich and the learned? Like a shepherd, he says, who will not let any of his sheep be lost.