“Where was I in the story, children?”

“The baby on the hay, sweet mother.”

“Ah, yes, I mind me now.  I took him in my arms.  To me no child had ever looked the same.  But now, a marvel!  The rock stable, which before had seemed dark indeed, lighted only by our dim lamps, suddenly shone full of light.  I raised my eyes, and there, before and above me, seemingly through a rent in the roof, I beheld a most large and luminous star.  Verily, I had not seen the opening in the roof when I had lain me down, but now I could do naught else but look from my baby’s face beside me, along the floods of light to the star before.

“And now, without, rose a cry:  ’We are come to behold the King.  We are guided.’  And, entering the stable, clad in their coats of sheepskin, with their slings and crooks yet in their hands, came shepherds, I cannot now recall the number.”

“I had wrapped my babe in his clothes, and had lain him in his manger.  And now it was so that as soon as their eyes fell upon his face, they sank to their knees and worshiped him.”

“‘Heard you not,’ spake a white-bearded shepherd to me; ’heard you not, young Mother Mary, the angels’ song?’”

“‘Meseems I have long heard it, and can hear naught else, good father,’ I answered.”

“To us it came,’ he said, ’in the first watch of this night, and with it music not of earth.’”

“Afterward came the learned ones from the Eastern countries, — I know not now the land.  The gifts they brought him made all the place seem like a king’s palace; and with all their gifts they gave him worship also.”

“And I lay watching it all.  And it shall be always so, I thought.”

“But these, though wise men, were not of our race, and could not follow the guiding star with our faith.  Wherefore, so much stir had they made throughout the kingdom, inquiring publicly concerning this, your brother, that, through the jealousy of Herod, great was the trouble and misery that fell upon the innocent after their going.”

“But hearken, children; I hear even now your father and your brother coming from their work.  Place quickly the gifts within the basket.”

It is a gentle figure that bends among mother and children, and a tender voice that questions: 

“Shall I bear forth the gifts?”

“They are ready now, my son.  Even this moment thy brother James placed the last within the basket, but canst thou not partake of the evening meal before thou goest with them?  Thou art but a lad, to go forth alone after a day of toil.”

“Nay, but I must be about the Master’s work; and, look, the stars are rising.  I should tarry not, for they who toil long rest early.”

“For whom is thy service to-night, my son?  Last birth-night it was to the sorrowing; before that to the blind, and even yet to the deaf and the lame.  And whither tend thy footsteps now?”

“To the tempted ones, mother.”