tprints on the wet river-sand glisten for a moment
with moisture and then disappear.

I saw him again at the foot of the pyramids, which lifted their sharp
points into the intense saffron glow of the sunset sky, changeless
monuments of the perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He
looked up into the face of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to
read the meaning of the calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed,
the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said--the
cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can
succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that
inscrutable smile--a promise that even the defeated should attain a
victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the ignorant
should be made wise, and the blind should see, and the wandering should
come into the haven at last?

I saw him again in an obscure house of Alexandria, taking counsel with a
Hebrew rabbi. The venerable man, bending over the rolls of parchment
on which the prophecies of Israel were written, read aloud the pathetic
words which foretold the sufferings of the promised Messiah--the
despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief.

"And remember, my son," said he, fixing his eyes upon the face of
Artaban, "the King whom thou seekest is not to be found in a palace, nor
among the rich and powerful. If the light of the world and the glory
of Israel had been appointed to come with the greatness of earthly
splendour, it must have appeared long ago. For no son of Abraham will
ever again rival the power which Joseph had in the palaces of Egypt, or
the magnificence of Solomon throned between the lions in Jerusalem. But
the light for which the world is waiting is a new light, the glory that
shall rise out of patient and triumphant suffering. And the kingdom
which is to be established forever is a new kingdom, the royalty of
unconquerable love.

"I do not know how this shall come to pass, nor how the turbulent kings
and peoples of earth shall be brought to acknowledge the Messiah and pay
homage to him. But this I know. Those who seek him will do well to look
among the poor and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed."

So I saw the Other Wise Man again and again, travelling from place to
place, and searching among the people of the dispersion, with whom the
little family from Bethlehem might, perhaps, have found a refuge. He
passed through