A deep prolonged thunder that had been filling the hills with sound began to multiply as the nearest slopes caught it and tossed it from echo to echo.  It was not loud but immensely prevalent.  Those wayfarers who had fled came back to the brink of the hill and those who had stood their ground walked out into the grass to look back.  Around the curve of a buttress of rock that stood out at the line of the road, the head of a column of Roman cavalry appeared.  The superb color-bearer bore on his hip the staff supporting the Imperial standard.

At the forefront rode a young general; on either side a tribune. 
Behind came a detachment of six hundred horse.

The sheep huddling in the way were swept like a scurry of leaves out into the meadow alongside the road, and one of the tribunes and the general turned in their saddles to look at the confiscated flock.  The second tribune observed their interest in this trivial incident with disgust.  The young general, whose military cloak flaunted a purple border, called the decurion boyishly: 

“Well done, Sergius!  A samnos of wine for your company to-night for this.”

The decurion saluted.

“Where did you get them?” the tribune demanded.

The shepherd who had withdrawn to the side of the road on the approach of the column looked at the questioner with resentful eyes from which the moisture had not vanished.

“From me!” he said.

Both the purple-wearing young general and his tribune looked at him amusedly.

“How many killed and wounded, Sergius?” the tribune asked.

The silent and disapproving tribune, observing that the commanding officer had not given an order to halt, brought the six hundred to, lest they ride their general down.

“You!” the general exclaimed with his eyes on the young shepherd.

The boy looked up into the face of the Roman who sat above him on a snow-white horse.

It was a young face, tanned by the sun of Alexandria, but bright with an emanation of light that somehow was made tangible by the flash of his teeth as he talked and the sparkle of his lively eyes.  For a soldier exposed to the open air and the ruffian life of the camp and burdened with the grave task of subduing a desperate nation, he was free of disfigurements.  His brows were knitted as if to give his full soft eyes protection and the frown, with the laughing cut of his youthful lips, gave his face a quizzical expression that was entirely winning.  In countenance and figure he was handsome, refined and thoroughly Roman.  The little shepherd was won to him instantly.  Without knowing that the world from one border to the other had already named this charming young Roman the Darling of Mankind, the little shepherd, had his lips been shaped to poetry, would have called him that.

So Joseph, the shepherd, son of Thomas, the Christian, and Titus, son of Vespasian, Emperor of the World, looked at each other with perfect fellowship.