e set up high in the tower so
that men could see them against the blue sky. "And as for me," he said,
"let my body be buried, with my face downward, outside the great church,
in front of the middle entrance, that men may trample on my vainglory and
that I may serve them as a stepping-stone to the house of God; and the
little child shall look on me when I lie in the dust."

Now the little girl in the niche was carved with wisps of hay in her
hands, but the child who had fed the oxen knew nothing of this, and as she
grew up she forgot her childish service, so that when she had grown to
womanhood and chanced to see this statue over the portal she did not know
it was her own self in stone. But what she had done was not forgotten in
heaven.

And as for the oxen, one of them looked east and one looked west across
the wide fruitful country about the foot of the hill-city. And one caught
the first grey gleam, and the first rosy flush, and the first golden
splendor of the sunrise; and the other was lit with the color of the
sunset long after the lowlands had faded away in the blue mist of the
twilight. Weary men and worn women looking up at them felt that a gladness
and a glory and a deep peace had fallen on the life of toil. And then,
when people began to understand, they said it was well that these mighty
laborers, who had helped to build the house, should still find a place of
service and honor in the house; and they remembered that the Master of the
house had once been a Babe warmed in a manger by the breath of kine. And
at the thought of this men grew more pitiful to their cattle, and to the
beasts in servitude, and to all dumb animals. And that was one good fruit
which sprang from the Prince Bishop's repentance.

Now over the colossal stone oxen hung the bells of the Cathedral. On
Christmas Eve the ringers, according to the old custom, ascended to their
gallery to ring in the birth of the Babe Divine. At the moment of midnight
the master ringer gave the word, and the great bells began to swing in
joyful sequence. Down below in the crowded church lay the image of the
new-born Child on the cold straw, and at His haloed head stood the images
of the ox and the ass. Far out across the snow-roofed city, far away over
the white glistening country rang the glad music of the tower. People who
went to their doors to listen cried in astonishment: "Hark! what strange
music is that? It sounds as if the lowing of cattle were mingled wi