“The shepherd returned my salutation, accepted my offer to share the very scanty food which I had purchased and so sat down before me on the ground to eat.
“As we ate we grew acquainted. I told him frankly enough of my misfortune, though not in detail. ‘I was,’ said I, ‘only the day before yesterday a rich man. Today I am what you see, and my last piece of silver is gone.’ He looked at me gravely and said that there was One Who gave and Who took away. His Name be exalted. ‘These sheep, for instance,’ said he, ‘are the property of a man contemptible in every way, foolish, irascible, a bad master and (one would have thought) an unwise merchant. Yet he prospers while I, the shepherd, remain upon a hire too small to permit me to save. And so it has been for years!’
“ ‘I have not,’ added he a little bitterly, ‘the faculties for that sort of life which my master pursues. At any rate I am quite certain of this: that by any common judgment of men he is the inferior and I the lord. Yet here I am! … The world deals harshly by poor men.’ He looked at me to see if the words sank in.
“As he thus spoke (his sadness seemed to relieve my own with a sense of our common dependence) the sun now near the horizon warned us of prayer and I was glad indeed to see that this new chance companion was as much alive as I to the duties we owe our Maker. He fell upon his knees and bowed to the evening prayer as I did beside him, and for some moments, as we recited the sacred formula, all worldly thoughts passed from my mind and I think from his also. We rose at the same moment from this exercise, each filled, I felt, with brotherhood. I was the first to break the consecrated silence.
“I did so by asking him whether he had never thought, in the course of his long years as a shepherd, how money might be made by the stealing of his master’s sheep, or by some trick with them? Whether he had never had the opportunity to blackmail his master, or in some other way to increase his fortune? For it seemed intolerable to me that a man such as he described his employer to be, should be wealthy while he were poor. He shrugged his shoulders as though in despair and answered simply:
“ ‘In the distant past I often attempted such things; but invariably have I failed. Indeed, the master graziers of this part know me well for one who has attempted at their expense every kind of bold chance, and I would never have employment from them were it not for my skill in lambing and in every other part of the trade. As it is they watch me rigorously. Their spies are everywhere. I could not, I fear, make one dinar by any one of the methods you suggest. I have in my time tried them all. I have forged receipts; I have sold sheep which afterwards I entered as dead from accident; I have falsified the returns of the lambing; I have sometimes raised a sum of money upon the flock under pretence that it was my own. My only reward has been fine and imprisonment and cruel torture. But the truth is that I have not the faculties of the merchant. They are, I take it, granted to some and withheld from others. For my part I have despaired of their exercise and shall never turn to them again.’
“His words filled me at once with pity and with hope, and (since ingenuity is never long absent from men of my temper) a scheme suddenly appeared.
“ ‘Why should not we,’ I said, after I had gathered wood and lit a fire to meet the approaching darkness, ‘enter into partnership? I think I may say without boasting that I possess in a singular degree those faculties which you say you lack. God made me in every part for a merchant. I can conceal, distort, forestall, outdo, bully, terrify and even boldly snatch, far better than any other man I have come across. Only once in my life have I fallen into the weakness of trusting others and as you see I have paid bitterly for that weakness.’ So I spoke, not noticing that I was yet again committing the same error in suggesting partnership to a mere stranger. But in truth Allah had blinded me; purposing to make me taste misfortune to the full that I might the better adore His later beneficence.
“ ‘All these talents I have in abundance and more also,’ I continued, ‘for God has been very good to me. You, on the other hand, have what I lack; that is, a knowledge of the towns round about and of their markets; of the value of sheep; of the system which has been organized for the catching of ingenious men; and of how that system may be avoided. Between us, then, we have all the things needed for our success. Come, let us determine with the very next breaking of the light to try our fortunes together.’
“After I had thus spoken the shepherd looked at me long and anxiously over the fire, the reflection of
