countries where famine lay heavy upon the land, and the
poor were crying for bread. He made his dwelling in plague-stricken
cities where the sick were languishing in the bitter companionship of
helpless misery. He visited the oppressed and the afflicted in the gloom
of subterranean prisons, and the crowded wretchedness of slave-markets,
and the weary toil of galley-ships. In all this populous and intricate
world of anguish, though he found none to worship, he found many to
help. He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick,
and comforted the captive; and his years passed more swiftly than the
weaver's shuttle that flashes back and forth through the loom while the
web grows and the pattern is completed.

It seemed almost as if he had forgotten his quest. But once I saw him
for a moment as he stood alone at sunrise, waiting at the gate of a
Roman prison. He had taken from a secret resting-place in his bosom the
pearl, the last of his jewels. As he looked at it, a mellower lustre,
a soft and iridescent light, full of shifting gleams of azure and rose,
trembled upon its surface. It seemed to have absorbed some reflection of
the lost sapphire and ruby. So the secret purpose of a noble life draws
into itself the memories of past joy and past sorrow. All that has
helped it, all that has hindered it, is transfused by a subtle magic
into its very essence. It becomes more luminous and precious the longer
it is carried close to the warmth of the beating heart.

Then, at last, while I was thinking of this pearl, and of its meaning, I
heard the end of the story of the Other Wise Man.

V

Three-and-thirty years of the life of Artaban had passed away, and he
was still a pilgrim and a seeker after light. His hair, once darker
than the cliffs of Zagros, was now white as the wintry snow that covered
them. His eyes, that once flashed like flames of fire, were dull as
embers smouldering among the ashes.

Worn and weary and ready to die, but still looking for the King, he had
come for the last time to Jerusalem. He had often visited the holy city
before, and had searched all its lanes and crowded bevels and black
prisons without finding any trace of the family of Nazarenes who had
fled from Bethlehem long ago. But now it seemed as if he must make one
more effort, and something whispered in his heart that, at last, he
might succeed.

It was the season of the Passover. The city was thronged with strangers.
The chil