ked man," he answered.

She shook her head gently.

"I know nothing of that," she said, "but you must be very sorrowful,
since you are born of a woman and yet you ask a mother why she loves
her child. I love him for love's sake, because God has given him to
me."

So the mother Mary leaned over her little son again and began to croon
a song as if she were alone with him.

But Ammiel was still there, watching and thinking and beginning to
remember. It came back to him that there was a woman in Galilee who
had wept when he was rebuked; whose eyes had followed him when he was
unhappy, as if she longed to do something for him; whose voice had
broken and dropped silent while she covered her tear-stained face when
he went away.

His thoughts flowed swiftly and silently toward her and after her like
rapid waves of light. There was a thought of her bending over a little
child in her lap, singing softly for pure joy,--and the child was
himself. There was a thought of her lifting a little child to the
breast that had borne him as a burden and a pain, to nourish him there
as a comfort and a treasure,--and the child was himself. There was a
thought of her watching and tending and guiding a little child from
day to day, from year to year, putting tender arms around him, bending
over his first wavering steps, rejoicing in his joys, wiping away the
tears from his eyes, as he had never tried to wipe her tears
away,--and the child was himself. She had done everything for the
child's sake, but what had the child done for her sake? And the child
was himself: that was what he had come to,--after the nightfire had
burned out, after the darkness had grown thin and melted in the
thoughts that pulsed through it like rapid waves of light,--that was
what he had come to in the early morning,--himself, a child in his
mother's arms.

Then he arose and went out of the grotto softly, making the three-fold
sign of reverence; and the eyes of Mary followed him with kind looks.

Joseph of Nazareth was still waiting outside the door.

"How was it that you did not see the angels?" he asked. "Were you not
with the other shepherds?"

"No," answered Ammiel, "I was asleep. But I have seen the mother and
the child. Blessed be the house that holds them."

"You are strangely clad for a shepherd," said Joseph. "Where do you
come from?"

"From a far country," replied Ammiel; "from a country that you have
never visited."

"Where are you going now?" a