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.

A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

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 through all its lanes and crowded hovels 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 children of Israel, scattered in far lands all over the world, had returned to the Temple for the great feast, and there had been a confusion of tongues in the narrow streets for many days.

But on this day there was a singular agitation visible in the multitude.  The sky was veiled with a portentous gloom, and currents of excitement seemed to flash through the crowd like the thrill which shakes the forest on the eve of a storm.  A secret tide was sweeping them all one way.  The clatter of sandals, and the soft, thick sound of thousands of bare feet shuffling over the stones, flowed unceasingly along the street that leads to the Damascus gate.

Artaban joined company with a group of people from his own country, Parthian Jews who had come up to keep the Passover, and inquired of them the cause of the tumult, and where they were going.

“We are going,” they answered, “to the place called Golgotha, outside the city walls, where there is to be an execution.  Have you not heard what has happened?  Two famous robbers are to be crucified, and with them another, called Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done many wonderful works among the people, so that they love him greatly.  But the priests and elders have said that he must die, because he gave himself out to be the Son of God.  And Pilate has sent him to the cross because he said that he was the ‘King of the Jews.’”

How strangely these familiar words fell upon the tired heart of Artaban!  They had led him for a lifetime over land and sea.  And now they came to him darkly and mysteriously like a message of despair.  The King had arisen, but He had been denied and cast out.  He was about to perish.  Perhaps He was already dying.  Could it be the same who had been born in Bethlehem thirty-three years ago, at whose birth the star had appeared in heaven, and of whose coming the prophets had spoken?