While our thoughts were carried away to these scenes of thirsty flocks drinking, I chanced to notice that the tea-ball was again quietly at work. As we sat thinking on that picture up in the mountain, a good hand offered our guest a fresh cup. He received it with a low bow, sipped it in quiet, then with a grateful smile began speaking again:
“ He restoreth my soul. You know,” he said, turning to me, “that soul means the life or one’s self in the Hebrew writings.”
Then addressing us all he went on: “There are perilous places for the sheep on all sides, and they seem never to learn to avoid them.
The shepherd must ever be on the watch. And there are private fields and sometimes gardens and vineyards here and there in the shepherd country; if the sheep stray into them and be caught there it is forfeited to the owner of the land. So, ‘he restoreth my soul’ means, ‘The shepherd brings me back and rescues me from fatal and forbidden places.’”
“‘Restores me when wandering,’ is the way it is put in one of our hymns,” I interposed.
“Ah, sir, that is it exactly,” he answered, “‘restores me when wandering!’