At last Joseph came slowly from the town.  The enrolment was to take place to-morrow at nine o’clock; that was all right.  But there was difficulty over the lodging for the night.  He had spoken with rich relations; they would have been very glad, but unfortunately a wedding feast was going forward, and wanderers in homely garments might easily feel uncomfortable.  He quite understood that.  Then he went to his poorer relations, who would have been even more glad, but it was deplorable that their house was so small and their hearth so cramped.  All the inns were overcrowded with strangers.  They did not seem to think much here of people from Galilee because all kinds of heathenish folk lived there—­as if any one who was born in Bethlehem could be a heathen!  And so he did not know what to do.

Mary leaned her head on her hand and said nothing.

“Your hands and feet are trembling, Mary,” said Joseph.

She shook her head; it was nothing.

“Come, my wife, we will go in together,” said Joseph.  “We are not vagabonds to whom they can refuse assistance.”

And then they both went into the town.  Mine host of the inn was stern.

“I told you already, old man, that there’s no place for the like of you in my house.  Take your little daughter somewhere else.”

“She’s not my daughter, sir, but my true wife, trusted to me by God that I may protect her,” returned Joseph, and he lifted up his carpenter’s hand.

The door was slammed in their faces.

A fruit-seller, who had witnessed the scene, stretched forth his brown neck and asked for their passport.

“If you show me your papers and three pieces of silver, I’ll take you in for the love of God.  For we are all wanderers on the earth.”

“We’ve no passport.  We’ve come from Nazareth in Galilee for the enrolment, because I am of the house of David,” replied Joseph.

“Of the house of David!  Why, you don’t seem to know whether you’re on your head or your heels,” and with a laugh the fruit-seller went his way.

“It is true,” thought Joseph, “noble ancestors are useless to a man of no importance.”  For the future he would let David alone.

Mary now advised him to go outside the town again.  Perhaps the very poor or entire strangers would have pity on them.  And as they staggered along the stony road to the valley the woman sank down on the grass.

Joseph looked at her searchingly.  “Mary, Mary, what is it?”

A shepherd came along, looked at them, and listened to their request for shelter.

“My wife is ill, and no one will take us in,” complained Joseph.

“Then you must go to the beasts,” said the shepherd cheerfully.  “Come with me.  I’ll gladly share my house with you.  The earth is my bed, the sky my roof, and a rocky cave my bedchamber.”

And he led them to a hollow in the mossy rocks, and it had a roof woven out of rushes.  Inside an ox was chewing the hay it had eaten out of the manger.  A brown ass stood near by and licked the ox’s big head.  There was still some hay left in the manger and in the corner was a bed of dry leaves.