The Birthday Gift

It was really a comic sight: Fat Yammie pulling on the donkey as he tried to convince the poor animal to pull the loaded wagon up the rest of the trail.

"Come on," he urged. "It's not that much more! Just a little bit further."

The donkey who had heard this since they started from Acre the day before refused to budge.

"There's sugar waiting for you at the camp," Yammie wheedled, "and a whole well full of water."

Not one inch would the donkey move.

Finally, Yammie gave up. He knew the donkey well enough to realize that nothing would make him move until he wanted to. So Yammie took some bread from the wagon and sat down on a large rock to have a snack and then the donkey started moving. In fact, not just walking, but actually running!

Yammie lifted all 250 pounds of himself off the rock and puffed his way up the mountain road in chase of his wagon. When he finally caught up, his face was red and he was gasping for air.

"I . . . should . . . have . . . known," he wheezed. "Only - whew! - for you. Nothing . . . else . . . could have . . . made . . . him . . . run!"

"I didn't do anything," Chaya said. "It's just that animals well, they seem to like me."

"I know," Yammie said. "Imagine: this lazy donkey running, just because he heard you."

"Maybe it was because I always give him some sweets," Chaya smiled.

Chaya, Yammie, and the donkey walked the rest of the way to the Hebrew camp together. It wasn't much of a place; like most other villages in ancient Israel it had little more than a few tents. Still, it was the only home that Chaya had ever known or wanted to know.

Yammie was a different story completely. He wasn't even a Hebrew, although he was more welcome in the camp than most other people would be. He was a trader from Acre, and every two months the fat Phoenician would load up his cart and head for the mountain camps where the Tribe of Zebulon lived. He was a fair main, and the Hebrews knew he would give them an honest price for their olives, wool, and other products.

Acre wasn't all that far from Manof, where Chaya lived. In fact, where there were no clouds, she could see it clearly. Still, no one from her camp had ever been there.

There had been a time oh, about 100 years earlier when the Hebrews had been wanderers. They had even walked through the desert for 40 years when Moses led them out of Egypt. Since then, however,

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