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fragments in place and protecting the arm from further injury.”
    “By Diana!” the lyre maker exclaimed. “That is ingenious. Did you invent it?”
    “You should study the medicine of the Greeks as well as their music,” Joseph reminded him with a smile. “Hippocrates and other physicians were using methods like this nearly five hundred years ago. No doubt you remember what Idomeneus said to Nestor in the Homeric poems?”
    “You may hoist me on my own spear, young man,” Demetrius said triumphantly. “But that at least I know.” He declaimed sonorously:
    A surgeon’s skill our wounds to heal,
    Is worth more than armies to the Public weal.
    The poppy had exerted its effect by now, hastened by the wine in which Joseph had mixed it, and the lines of pain were almost gone from Simon’s face. He only winced a little as Joseph carefully removed the sling and showed Mary how to hold the lower arm so that the elbow was bent at an exact right angle. Next he wrapped a scarf around the elbow and arm, leaving the ends long, and attached to them a small pot from the kitchen. This was allowed to hang with its weight pulling upon the lower portion of the arm, and therefore upon the end of the broken bone.
    Into the pot Joseph next poured sand slowly, increasing the weight very gradually. From time to time as the pull increased, he touched the upper arm gently in the region of the fracture, feeling with the sensitive fingers of the bonesetter for the positions of the broken ends. When finally he could detect no overriding of the fragments—the pull of the muscles being now overcome by the weight of the kettle and the sand—he gently pushed and adjusted the broken parts until they were in line with each other. To the amazement of the onlookers, Simon suffered next to no pain during this manipulation, for the steady pull on the arm kept the bones apart and in line with each other, so that no jagged ends cut into the flesh.
    Now Joseph began to apply the bandage which must do the important job of holding the bone in place until it could heal. First the upper arm was wrapped in soft wool, and over it strips of thin wood were placed parallel to the bone as splints. Over this he wrapped turn after turn of the moist starched bandage, laying each one on carefully so that it was not twisted, rolled, or folded. At the shoulder he carried several turns around Simon’s body and beneath the opposite armpit to hold the bandage in place, before continuing around the elbow and down the arm as far as the wrist. Thus the entire elbow joint was covered except the lowermost portion, where the ends of the scarf were attached to the small kettle furnishing the weight.
    When it was finished, Demetrius waddled over and touched the white cast. “By Diana!” he cried. “It stiffens already. To be able to relieve suffering like this is better than either philosophy or music, Joseph. I am properly humbled.”
    But it was John, the son of Zebedee, who gave the young physician a real accolade for his work when he said quietly, “It was well said by Jesus, the son of Sirach:
    Show the physician due honor, in view of your need for him,
    His works will never end,
    And from him peace spreads over the face of the earth.
VI
    Joseph stopped at the doorway leading into the garden of Demetrius when he came the next morning to visit his patient, unwilling to interrupt the beautiful and peaceful scene before him by making his presence known. Simon was sitting on a bench overlooking the smooth mirror of the lake below, where the fishing boats with their multicolored sails were already abroad. Mary sat on the grass at his feet, with the morning sunlight turning her unbound hair into a coppery cascade. She touched the lyre in her hands with skilled fingers, and her voice filled the garden with a paean of praise from the poet who had loved this beautiful region around the lake, a part of the Song of Solomon!
    The voice of my beloved!
    Behold, he comes, leaping upon