The Valley of Vision : A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales

THE HERO AND TIN SOLDIERS

On December twenty-fifth, 1918, that little white house in the park was certainly the happiest dwelling in Calvinton. It was simply running over with Christmas.

You see, there had come to it a most wonderful present, a surprise full of tears and laughter. Captain Walter Mayne reached home on Christmas Eve.

For a while they had thought that he would never come back at all. News had been received that he was grievously wounded in France—shot to pieces, in effect, leading his men near Chateau-Thierry. His life hung on the ragged edge of those wounds. But his wife Katharine always believed that he would pull through. So he did. But he was lacking a leg, his right arm was knocked out of commission for the present, and various other souvenirs de la grande guerre were inscribed upon his body.

Then word arrived that he was coming on a transport, with other wounded, to be patched up in a hospital on Staten Island. So his wife Katharine smiled her way through innumerable entanglements of red tape and went to nurse him. Then she set her steady hand to pull all the wires necessary to get him discharged and sent home. Christmas was in her heart and she would not be denied. So it came to pass that the one-legged Hero was in his own house on the happy day, and joy was bubbling all around him.

When the old Pastor entered, late in the afternoon, the Christmas-tree was twinkling with lights, the children swarming and buzzing all over the place, so that he was dazed for a moment. There were Walter's mother and his aunt and his sisters-in-law, boys and girls of various sizes, and a jubilant and entrancing baby. The Pastor took it all in, and was glad of it, but his mind was on the Hero.

Katharine, who always understood everything, whispered softly: “Walter is waiting to see you, Doctor. He is in his study, just across the hall.”

Waiting? Well, what can a man whose right leg has been cut off above the knee, and who has not yet been able to get an artificial one—what can he do but wait?

The room was rather dimly lighted; brilliance is not good for the eyes of the wounded. Walter was in a long chair in the corner; his face was bronzed, drawn and lined a little by suffering; but steady and cheerful as ever, with the eager look which had made his students listen to him when he talked to them about English literature.

“My dear Walter,” said the Pastor, “my dear boy, we are so glad to have you home with us again. We are very proud of you. You are our Hero.”

“Thank you,” said Walter, “it is mighty good to be home again. But there is no hero business about it. I only did what all the other Americans who went over there did—fought my—excuse me, my best, against the beastly Germans.”

“But your leg,” said the Pastor impulsively, “it is gone. Aren't you angry about that?”

Walter was silent for a moment. Then he answered.

“No, I don't think angry is the right word. You remember that story about Nathan Hale in the Revolution—'I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country.' Well, I'm glad that I had two legs to give for my country, and particularly glad that she only needed one of them.”

“Tell me a bit about the fighting,” said the Pastor, “I want to know what it was like—the hero-touch—you understand?”

“Not for me,” said Walter, “and certainly not now. Later on I can tell you something, perhaps. But this is Christmas Day. And war? Well, Doctor, believe me, war is a horrible thing, full of grime and pain, madness, agony, hell—a thing that ought not to be. I have fought alongside of the other fellows to put an end to it, and now—”

The door swung open, and Sammy, the eldest son of the house, pranced in.

“Look, Daddy,” he cried, “see what Aunt Emily has sent me for Christmas—a big box of tin soldiers!”

Mayne smiled as the little boy carefully laid the box on his knee; but there was a shadow of pain in his eyes, and he closed them for a few seconds, as if his mind were going back, somewhere, far away. Then he spoke, tenderly, but with a grave voice.

“That's fine, sonny—all those tin soldiers. But don't you think they ought to belong to me? You have lots of other toys, you know. Would you give the soldiers to me?”

The child looked up at him, puzzled for a moment; then a flash of comprehension passed over his face, and he nodded valiantly.

“Sure, Father,” he said, “You're the Captain. Keep the soldiers. I'll play with the other toys,” and he skipped out of the room.

Mayne's look followed him with love. Then he turned to the old Pastor and a strange expression came into his face, half whimsical and half grim.

“Doctor,” he said, “will you do me a favor? Poke up that fire till it blazes. That's right. Now lay this box in the hottest part of the flames. That's right. It will soon be gone.”

The elder man did what was asked, with an air of slight bewilderment, as one humors the fancies of an invalid. He wondered whether Mayne's fever had quite left him. He watched the fire bulging the lid and catching round the edges of the box. Then he heard Mayne's voice behind him, speaking very quietly.

“If ever I find my little boy playing with tin soldiers, I shall spank him well. No, that wouldn't be quite fair, would it? But I shall tell him why he must not do it, and I shall make him understand that it's an impossible thing.”

Then the old Pastor comprehended. There was no touch of fever. The one-legged Hero had come home from the wars completely well and sound in mind. So the two men sat together in love by the Christmas fire, and saw the tin soldiers melt away.

SALVAGE POINT

The Hermanns built their house at the very end of the island, five or six miles from the more or less violently rustic “summer-cottages” which adorned the hills and bluffs around the native village of Winterport.

There was a long point running out to the southward at the mouth of the great bay, rough and rocky for the most part, with little woods of pointed firs on it, some acres of pasture, and a few pockets of fertile soil lying between the stony ridges. A yellow farmhouse, with a red barn beside it, had nestled for near a hundred years in one of these hollows, buying shelter from the winter winds at the cost of an outlook over sea and shore.

It was a large price to pay. The view from the summit of the little hill a few hundred yards away was superb—a wonder even on that wonderful coast of Maine where mountain and sea meet together, forest and flood kiss each other.

But I suppose the old Yankee farmer knew what he wanted when he paid the price and snuggled his house in the hollow. I am certain the Hermanns knew what they wanted when they bought the whole point and perched their house on the very top of the hill, where all the winds of heaven might visit it as roughly as they pleased, but where nothing could rob the outlook of its ever-changing splendor and mystery, its fluent wonder and abiding charm.

You see, the Hermanns knew what they wanted because they had come through a lot of trouble. I met them when they were young—no matter how many years ago—when they were in the thick of it.

Alice Mackaye and Will Hermann had the rare luck to fall in love—a very real and great love—when they were in their early twenties. You would think that extraordinary piece of good fortune would have been enough to set them up for life, wouldn't you? But no. There was an Obstacle. And that Obstacle came very near wrecking them both.

Will Hermann was an artist and the son of an artist. The love of beauty ran in his blood. Otherwise he was poor. He earned a decent living by his painting, but each year's living depended on each year's work. Hence he was in the proletarian class.

Alice Mackaye, on the other hand, belonged to the capitalist class. I say “belonged,” because that is precisely the word to describe her situation. Her father was a millionaire sugar-merchant, who lived in an ugly palace near Morristown, New Jersey, and was accustomed to have his own way in that and other States. He was the Obstacle.

He was a florid, handsome old Scotchman, orthodox in religion, shrewd in business, correct in conduct, but with no more sentiment than a hard-shell crab, and obstinate as the devil. His fixed idea was that none of his daughters should ever be carried off by a fortune-hunter. The two older girls apparently escaped this danger by making fairly wealthy matches. But Alice—come away! why should she take up with this impecunious painter? He was good-looking and had the gift of the gab, but what was that worth? If he would come into the sugar-business, where a place was waiting for him, and make good there, it would be all right. Otherwise, the affair must be broken off, absolutely, finally, and forever. From this you can see that the Obstacle was not bad-hearted, but only pig-headed.

Well, for five or six years things drifted rather miserably along this way. Will Hermann was forbidden the house at Morristown. Alice was practically a captive; her correspondence was censored. But of course, even before Marconi, wireless communication in matters of this kind has always been possible.

The trouble was that the state of affairs between them, while conventionally correct, was thoroughly unnatural and full of peril. Alice, a very good girl, obedient and tractable, was in danger of becoming a recalcitrant and sour old maid. Will, a healthy and normal young man, with no bad habits, was in danger of being driven to them by the emptiness and exasperation of his mind. The worst of it all was that both of the young people were, in accordance with a well-known law of nature, growing older with what seemed to them a frightful and unreasonable rapidity. The years crawled like snails. But the sum of them rose by leaps and bounds to an appalling total. Alice found two grey hairs in her red-gold locks. Will had to use glasses for reading fine print at night. From their point of view, decrepitude, senility, dotage stared them in the face, while the bright voyage of life which they were resolved to make only together, was threatened with shipwreck among the shoals of interminable delay.

It was at this juncture of affairs that they came to me, as fine-looking a young couple as ever I saw. They were good, as mortals go; they were loyal and upright, they wanted no scandal, no rumpus in the family, no trouble or pain for anybody else; but they wanted to belong to each other much more than they wanted to belong to any class, artistic, proletarian, or capitalist. And they were desperate because of the pertinacity of the Obstacle, whom they both respected fully as much as he deserved.

When they had stated their case, I made my answer.

“So far as I can see, the salvage of your ship of love depends entirely on yourselves. Mr. Hermann is not after a fortune, he only wants his girl; is that so? {Hermann nodded vigorously.} And Miss Mackaye does not care about being supported in the manner of living to which she has been accustomed; she only wants to live with the man whom she has chosen; is that so? {Alice blushed and nodded.} Well, then, why shouldn't you lay your course and sail ahead together? You are both of age, aren't you?”

They smiled at each other. “Yes, and a little over.”

“But my father!” said Alice. “You know I honor him, and I can never deny his authority over me.”

Here was the turn of the talk, the critical moment, the point where the chosen counsellor had to fall back upon the ultimate reality of his faith.

“Well,” I said, “you are absolutely correct, dear daughter, in your feeling toward your father. He has earned his money and has a right to dispose of it as he will. But, you know, there is a statute of limitations in regard to the authority of parents over the lives of their children. You have passed the limitation. What do you want to do?”

“To be married to Will Hermann,” she said, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, I don't care. But I don't want a family quarrel, a runaway match, all that horrid newspaper talk.” Here she was evidently a little excited and on the verge of tears.

“Certainly not,” I hastened to reassure her, “you can't possibly have a runaway match, because there is nothing for you to run away from. There is not a single duty in your father's house which you have not fulfilled, and of which your sisters can not now relieve you. There is no authority in the world which has the right to command the sacrifice of your life to another's judgment. There is only one thing that stands in your way, and that is your claim on a large inheritance. I understand you are quite willing to let that go. You are not even 'running away' from it—that is not the word—you are ready to jettison it.”

She looked puzzled, and murmured; “I don't exactly understand what that means.”

“To jettison,” I said, in that learned and dispassionate manner which is sometimes useful in relieving an emotional situation, “is a seafaring phrase. It means throwing overboard a part or the whole of a cargo in order to save the ship. As far as I can see that is the question which is up to you and your best friend at the present moment. Are you prepared to jettison the claim on a big fortune for the sake of making your voyage of life together?”

They looked at each other and a kind of radiance spread over their faces. “Surely,” they answered with one voice. “But how can the marriage be arranged,” asked Alice, “without a row in the family?”

“Very easily,” I answered. “Both of you are over age, though you don't look it. Our good lawyer friend Harrison will help you to get the license. Fix your day for the wedding, neither secret nor notorious; invite anybody you like, and come to me on the day you have chosen. The arrangements will be made. You shall be married, all right.”

So they came, and I married them, and it was a very good job.

They had some years of difficulty and uncertainty during which I caught brief glimpses of them now and then, always cheerful and happy together. In the course of time the Obstacle, being not at all bad-hearted but only pig-headed, probably relented a little, and finally was gathered to his fathers, according to the common lot of man. The older sisters behaved very well about the inheritance, and Alice was not left portionless. She brought three fine boys into the world. The house on Salvage Point was built by her and Will together.

It was there that I spent a day with them, in the summer of 1918, after many years during which we had not met. I was on naval duty, with Commander Kidd, of a certain station on the Maine coast. By invitation we put in with the motorboat S.P. 297, at Salvage Point. So it was that I met my old friends again, and knew what had become of their barque of love which I had helped to save from shipwreck.

The house on the peak of the hill was just what it ought to be; not aggressively rustic, not obtrusively classic—white pillars in front of it, and a terrace, but nothing dominating—it had the air of a very large and habitable lighthouse.

The extraordinary thing was the arrangement of the grounds. At every point one came upon some reminder of salvage. On the glorious August day when I was there, shipwreck seemed impossible: the Southern Way which opened to the Ocean was dancing with gay waves; the blue mountains of Maine were tranquil on the horizon.

“But you see,” said Will Hermann, “this is really rather a dangerous point, though it is so beautiful. It is the gateway of the open sea, and there are three big ledges across it. A ship that has lost her bearings a little, or is driving in through thick weather, easily comes to grief. But there is not often a loss of life, only the ship goes to pieces. And we save the pieces.”

It was true. There was a terrace west of the house, with a balustrade made of the taffrail of a wrecked brigantine. The gateway to the garden was the door of an old wheel-house. There was a pergola constructed from the timbers of a four-masted schooner that had broken up on the third ledge. The bow of the sloop Christabel, with the name still painted on it, was just outside the garden-gate. Everywhere you saw old anchor-bits, and rudder-posts, and knees, all silver-greyed by the weather, and fitted in to the decor of the place.

The prettiest thing of all was a crow's-nest from a wrecked brigantine, perched on the highest point of the hill, and looking out over the marvellous panorama of sea and shore, island and mountain. Here we sat, after a hearty luncheon with Alice and her three boys and half-a-dozen others who were with them in a kind of summer camp-school; and while we smoked our pipes, Will Hermann told this story.

“You see, Alice and I have a mania for things that have been salvaged. We don't like the idea of the wrecks, of course. But they would happen any way, whether we were here or not. And since that is so, we like to live here on the point and help save what we can. Sometimes we get a chance to do something for the crews of the little ships that come ashore—hot supper and dry clothes and so forth. But the most interesting salvage case that we ever had on the point was one in which there was really no wreck at all.

“It was a bright September afternoon ten years ago—one of those silver-blue days when there is a little quivering haze in the air everywhere, but no fog. We were sitting up here and looking out to sea. Just beyond the end of Dunker Rock a large motor-boat came in sight through the haze. She was about sixty feet long, with a low cabin forward, a cockpit aft, and a raised place for the steersman amidship—a good-looking craft, and evidently very speedy. She carried no flag or pennant. She came driving on, full tilt, straight toward us. We supposed of course she would turn east through the narrow channel to Winterport, or sheer off to the west into the Southern Way and go up the bay. But not a point did she swerve. Steady on she came, toward the three big ledges that lie out there beyond that bit of shingly beach at the end of the point.

“'I can't see any helmsman,' said Alice, 'those people must be asleep or crazy. Give them a hail through the megaphone. Perhaps you can make them hear.'

“So I yelled at the top of my lungs, and Alice waved her jersey. We might as well have hailed a comet. That boat ran straight for the ledges as if she meant to hurdle them. She came near doing it, too. Over the first she scraped, as if her heel had hit it. Over the second she shivered, hanging there for a second till a wave lifted her. On the third she bumped hard and checked her way for a moment, but the engine kept going, and finally she got herself over somehow and ran head on to the beach.

“Of course we were excited, and everybody hurried down to see what this crazy performance meant. There was not a creature on the boat, alive or dead.

“Everything was shipshape. The little craft had evidently been used for fishing. There were rough men's clothes on board, rubber boots and oilskins, fresh water and provisions, blankets in the cabin, fishing-lines and bait in the cockpit, gasolene in the tanks—a nice little outfit, all complete, and no one to run it.

“Where had she come from? There were no names on bow or stern, no papers in the cabin. Who had started her on this crazy voyage? How did she get away from them? Had they perhaps abandoned her and cast her adrift for some mysterious reason? Undoubtedly there were men—apparently three—on board when she set out. What had happened to them? A drunken quarrel? Or possibly one of the men had fallen overboard; the others had jumped in to save him; the engine had started up and the boat left them all in the lurch. Perhaps one or all of them may have had some reason for wanting to 'disappear without a trace,' so they hit upon the plan of going ashore at some lonely place and turning the boat loose to wreck herself. That would have been a stupid scheme of course, but not too stupid to be human.

“It was just a little piece of sea mystery to which we had no clew. So we debated it for an hour, and then set about the more important work of salvaging the stranded derelict. Fortunately she went ashore near the last of the ebb, and now lay comfortably in the mud, apparently little damaged except for some long scratches on her side, and a broken blade in her propeller. We dug away the mud at bow and stern, made fast a tow-line, and when the tide came in my small cruiser pulled her off easily. In the morning the mysterious stranger lay at anchor in the cove round the corner, as quiet as a China duck.

“Of course we advertised in the coast newspapers, giving a description of the boat—'came ashore,' etc.

“Three days later a boy about thirteen years old turned up at Winterport. He came from a village at the northeast corner of the bay forty miles away. He guessed the boat was his father's, but couldn't say for sure until he had seen it. So he came down to the point and identified it beyond a doubt. He told his story very simply.

“The boat belonged to his father, who was a widow-man with only one child. He used the boat for fishing, and sometimes he took Johnny with him, sometimes not. On the trips without the boy he used to stay out longer, sometimes a week or ten days. About a week ago he had started out on one of these trips with two other men. They had a dory in tow. They hadn't come back. Johnny had seen the piece in the paper. Here was the boat, for sure, but no dory. As for the rest of the story—well, that was all that Johnny had to tell us about it—the mystery was as far away as ever.

“He was a fine, sturdy little chap, with tanned face and clear blue eyes. He was rather shaken by his experience, of course, but he wouldn't cry—not for the world. We were glad to take him in for the night, while we verified his story by telegraph. It seemed the boat was practically his only inheritance, and the first question he asked, after we had gone over it, was how much we wanted him to pay for salvage.

“'Just one cent,' said Alice, taking the words out of my mouth, 'and what is more, we are going to have her repaired for you. She isn't much hurt.' So the boy stammered out the best kind of a 'thank you' that he could manage, and the look in his eyes made up for the lack of words. That was the time that he came nearest to crying. But Alice saved him by asking what he was going to do with the boat.

“He had an idea that he could run her himself, perhaps with another man to help him, for fishing in the fall, and for pleasure parties in the summer. He didn't want to cut loose from home altogether and sell the boat. Perhaps Dad might come back, some day, or send a letter. Anyway Johnny wanted to stay by a seafaring life.

“So we arranged the repairs and all that, and got a man to help on the homeward trip, and after a few days Johnny sailed off with his patrimony. That is what Alice and I consider our neatest job of salvage.”

“Did it work all right?” I asked.

“Finely,” said Will Hermann, “like a charm.”

“And where is the lad now?”

“Bo'sun's mate on a certain destroyer somewhere off the coast of France, fighting in the U. S. Navee.”

“And the father?” I inquired, being one of those old-fashioned persons who like all the loose ends of a story to be tied up. “Was anything ever heard of him?”

“That,” answered my friend, carefully shaking out the ashes of his pipe beyond the crow's-nest rail, “that belongs in a different compartment of the ship.”

THE BOY OF NAZARETH DREAMS

There was a Boy in Nazareth long ago whose after-life was wonderful, and whose story is written in the heart of mankind. His birth was predicted in dreams foretelling marvellous things of him, and in later years there were many true visions wherein he played a wondrous part.

Did he not also dream, in the days of his youth, while he was growing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man? It would be strange indeed if his boyhood was not often visited and illumined by those swift flashes of insight and clear unveilings of hidden things, which we call dreams but which are in truth rays from “the fountain light of all our day.”

The first journey that he made, his earliest visit to a great city, the three days and nights when he was lost there—surely these were times when visions must have come to him, full of mystery and wonder, yet clothed in the simple, real forms of this world, which he was learning to know. So I let my revery follow him on that unrecorded path, remembering where it led him, and imagining, in the form of dreams, what may have met him on his way.

I. THE JOURNEY TO THE CITY

There was not a lad in the country town of Nazareth, nestled high on the bosom of the Galilean hills, who did not often look eagerly southward over the plain toward the dark mountains of Samaria, and think of the great city which lay beyond them, and long for the time when he would be old enough to go with his family on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

That journey would carry him out of childhood. It would mark the beginning of his life as a “son of the commandment,” a member of the Hebrew nation. Moreover it would be an adventure—a very great and joyous adventure, which youth loves.

Palestine, in the days when Augustus Caesar was Lord of the World, was an exciting country to travel in. It was full of rovers and soldiers of fortune from many lands. It was troubled by mobs and tumults and rebellions, infested with landlopers and brigands. Jerusalem itself was not only a great city, it was a boisterous and boiling city, crowded with visitors from all parts of the world, merchants and travellers, princes and beggars, citizens of Rome and children of the Desert. There were strange sights to be seen there, and all kinds of things were sold in the markets. So while the heart of young Nazareth longed for it, the heart of older Nazareth was not without anxieties and apprehensions in regard to the first pilgrimage.

This was doubly true in the home of the Boy of whom I speak. He was the first-born, the darling of his parents, a lad beloved by all who knew him. His mother hung on him with mystical joy and hope. He was the apple of her eye. Deep in her soul she kept the memory of angelic words which had come to her while she carried him under her heart—words which made her believe that her son would be the morning-star of Israel and a light unto the Gentiles. So she cherished the Boy and watched over him with tender, unfailing care, as her most precious possession, her living, breathing, growing treasure.

When he reached the age of twelve, he was old enough to go up to the Temple and take part in the national feast of the Passover. So she clad him in the garments of youth and made him ready for the four days' pilgrimage.

It was a camping-trip, a wonder-walk, full of variety, with a spice of danger and a feast of delight.

The Boy was the joy of the journey. His keen interest in all things seen and heard was like a refreshing spring of water to the older pilgrims. They had so often travelled the same road that they had forgotten that it might be new every morning. His unwearying vigor and gladness as he ran down the hillsides, or scrambled among the rocks far above the path, or roamed through the fields filling his hands with flowers, was like a merry song that cheered the long miles of the way. He was glad to be alive, and it made the others glad to look at him.

There were sixty or seventy kinsfolk and neighbors, plain rustic men and women, in the little company that set out from Nazareth. The men carried arms to protect the caravan from robbers or marauders. As they wound slowly down the steep, stony road to the plain of Esdraelon the Boy ran ahead, making short cuts, turning aside to find a partridge's nest among the bushes, jumping from rock to rock like a young gazelle, or poising on the edge of some cliff in sheer delight of his own sure-footedness.

His body was outlined against the sky; his blue eyes (like those of his mother, who was a maid of Bethlehem) sparkled with the joy of living; his long hair was lifted and tossed by the wind of April. But his mother's look followed him anxiously, and her heart often leaped in her throat.

“My son,” she said, as they took their noon-meal in the valley at the foot of dark Mount Gilboa, “you must be more careful. Your feet might slip.”

“Mother,” answered the Boy, “I am truly very careful. I always put my feet in the places that God has made for them—on the big, strong rocks that will not roll. It is only because I am so happy that you think I am careless.”

The tents were pitched, the first night, under the walls of Bethshan, a fortified city of the Romans. Set on a knoll above the river Jordan, the town loomed big and threatening over the little camp of the Galilean pilgrims. But they kept aloof from it, because it was a city of the heathen. Its theatres and temples and palaces were accursed. The tents were indifferent to the city, and when the night opened its star-fields above them and the heavenly lights rose over the mountains of Moab and Samaria, the Boy's clear voice joined in the slumber-song of the pilgrims:

Then they drew their woollen cloaks over their heads and rested on the ground in peace.

For two days their way led through the wide valley of the Jordan, along the level land that stretched from the mountains on either side to the rough gulch where the river was raging through its jungle. They passed through broad fields of ripe barley and ripening wheat, where the quail scuttled and piped among the thick-growing stalks. There were fruit-orchards and olive-groves on the foothills, and clear streams ran murmuring down through glistening oleander thickets. Wild flowers sprang in every untilled corner; tall spikes of hollyhocks, scarlet and blue anemones, clusters of mignonette, rock-roses, and cyclamens, purple iris in the moist places, and many-colored spathes of gladiolus growing plentifully among the wheat.

The larks sang themselves into the sky in the early morn. Hotter grew the sun and heavier the air in that long trough below the level of the sea. The song of birds melted away. Only the hawks wheeled on motionless wings above silent fields, watching for the young quail or the little rabbits, hidden among the grain.

The pilgrims plodded on in the heat. Companies of soldiers with glittering arms, merchants with laden mules jingling their bells, groups of ragged thieves and bold beggars met and jostled the peaceful travellers on the road. Once a little band of robbers, riding across the valley to the land of Moab, turned from a distance toward the Nazarenes, circled swiftly around them like hawks, whistling and calling shrilly to one another. But there was small booty in that country caravan, and the men who guarded it looked strong and tough; so the robbers whirled away as swiftly as they had come.

The Boy had stood close to his father in this moment of danger, looking on with surprise at the actions of the horsemen.

“What did those riders want?” he asked.

“All we have,” answered the man.

“But it is very little,” said the Boy. “Nothing but our clothes and some food for our journey. If they were hungry, why did they not ask of us?”

The man laughed. “These are not the kind that ask,” he said, “they are the kind that take—what they will and when they can.”

“I do not like them,” said the Boy. “Their horses were beautiful, but their faces were hateful—like a jackal that I saw—in the gulley behind Nazareth one night. His eyes were burning red as fire. Those men had fires inside of them.”

For the rest of that afternoon he walked more quietly and with thoughtful looks, as if he were pondering the case of men who looked like jackals and had flames within them.

At sunset, when the camp was made outside the gates of the new city of Archelaus, on a hillock among the corn-fields, he came to his mother with his hands full of the long lavender and rose and pale-blue spathes of the gladiolus-lilies.

“Look, mother,” he cried, “are they not fine—like the clothes of a king?”

“What do you know of kings?” she answered, smiling. “These are only wild lilies of the field. But a great king, like Solomon, has robes of thick silk, and jewels on his neck and his fingers, and a big crown of gold on his head.”

“But that must be very heavy,” said the Boy, tossing his head lightly. “It must tire him to wear a crown-thing and such thick robes. Besides, I think the lilies are really prettier. They look just as if they were glad to grow in the field.”

The third night they camped among the palm-groves and heavy-odored gardens of Jericho, where Herod's splendid palace rose above the trees. The fourth day they climbed the wild, steep, robber-haunted road from the Jordan valley to the highlands of Judea, and so came at sundown to their camp-ground among friends and neighbors on the closely tented slope of the Mount of Olives, over against Jerusalem.

What an evening that was for the Boy! His first sight of the holy city, the city of the great king, the city lifted up and exalted on the sides of the north, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth! He had dreamed of her glory as he listened at his mother's knee to the wonder-tales of David and Solomon and the brave adventures of the fighting Maccabees. He had prayed for the peace of Jerusalem every night as he kneeled by his bed and lifted his hands toward the holy place. He had tried a thousand times to picture her strength and her splendor, her marvels and mysteries, her multitude of houses and her vast bulwarks, as he strayed among the humble cottages of Nazareth or sat in the low doorway of his own home.

Now his dream had come true. He looked into the face of Jerusalem, just across the deep, narrow valley of the Kidron, where the shadows of the evening were rising among the tombs. The huge battlemented walls, encircling the double mounts of Zion and Moriah—the vast huddle of white houses, covering hill and hollow with their flat roofs and standing so close together that the streets were hidden among them—the towers, the colonnades, the terraces—the dark bulk of the Roman castle—the marble pillars and glittering roof of the Temple in its broad court on the hilltop—it was a city of stone and ivory and gold, rising clear against the soft saffron and rose and violet of the sunset sky.

The Boy sat with his mother on the hillside while the light waned, and the lamps began to twinkle in the city, the stars to glow in the deepening blue. He questioned her eagerly—what is that black tower?—why does the big roof shine so bright?—where was King David's house?—where are we going to-morrow?

“To-morrow,” she answered, “you will see. But now it is the sleep-time. Let us sing the psalm that we used to sing at night in Nazareth—but very softly, not to disturb the others—for you know this psalm is not one of the songs of the pilgrimage.”

So the mother and her Child sang together with low voices:

The tune and the words quieted the Boy. It was like a bit of home in a far land.

II. THE GILDED TEMPLE

The next day was full of wonder and excitement. It was the first day of the Feast, and the myriad of pilgrims crowded through the gates and streets of the city, all straining toward the enclosure of the Temple, within whose walls two hundred thousand people could be gathered. On every side the Boy saw new and strange things: soldiers in their armor, and shops full of costly wares; richly dressed Sadducees with their servants following; Jews from far-away countries, and curious visitors from all parts of the world; ragged children of the city, and painted women of the street, and beggars and outcasts of the lower quarters, and rich ladies with their retinues, and priests in their snowy robes.

The family from Nazareth passed slowly through the confusion, and the Boy, bewildered by the changing scene, longed to get to the Temple. He thought everything must be quiet and holy there. But when they came into the immense outer court, with its porticos and alcoves, he found the confusion worse than ever. For there the money-changers and the buyers and sellers of animals for sacrifice were bargaining and haggling; and the thousands of people were jostling and pushing one another; and the followers of the Pharisees and the Sadducees were disputing; and on many faces he saw that strange look which speaks of a fire in the heart, so that it seemed like a meeting-place of robbers.

His father had bought a lamb for the Passover sacrifice, at one of the stalls in the outer court, and was carrying it on his shoulder. He pressed on through the crowd at the Beautiful Gate, the Boy and his mother following until they came to the Court of the Women. Here the mother stayed, for that was the law—a woman must not go farther. But the Boy was now “a son of the Commandment,” and he followed his father through the Court of Israel to the entrance of the Court of the Priests. There the little lamb was given to a priest, who carried it away to the great stone altar in the middle of the court.

The Boy could not see what happened then, for the place was crowded and busy. But he heard the blowing of trumpets, and the clashing of cymbals, and the chanting of psalms. Black clouds of smoke went up from the hidden altar; the floor around was splashed and streaked with red. After a long while, as it seemed, the priest brought back the dead body of the lamb, prepared for the Passover supper.

“Is this our little lamb?” asked the Boy as his father took it again upon his shoulder.

The father nodded.

“It was a very pretty one,” said the Boy. “Did it have to die?”

The father looked down at him curiously. “Surely,” he said, “it had to be offered on the altar, so that we can keep our feast according to the law of Moses to-night.”

“But why,” persisted the Boy, “must all the lambs be killed in the Temple? Does God like that? How many do you suppose were brought to the altar to-day?”

“Tens of thousands,” answered the father.

“It is a great many,” said the Boy, sighing. “I wish one was enough.”

He was silent and thoughtful as they made their way through the Court of the Women and found the mother and went back to the camp on the hillside. That night the family ate their Paschal feast, with their loins girded as if they were going on a journey, in memory of the long-ago flight of the Israelites from Egypt. There was the roasted lamb, with bitter herbs, and flat cakes of bread made without yeast. A cup of wine was passed around the table four times. The Boy asked his father the meaning of all these things, and the father repeated the story of the saving of the first-born sons of Israel in that far-off night of terror and death when they came out of Egypt. While the supper was going on, hymns were sung, and when it was ended they all chanted together:

So the Boy lay down under his striped woollen cloak of blue and white and drifted toward sleep, glad that he was a son of Israel, but sorry when he thought of the thousands of little lambs and the altar floor splashed with red. He wondered if some day God would not give them another way to keep that feast.

The next day of the festival was a Sabbath, on which no work could be done. But the daily sacrifice of the Temple, and all the services and songs and benedictions in its courts, continued as usual, and there was a greater crowd than ever within its walls. As the Boy went thither with his parents they came to a place where a little house was beginning to burn, set on fire by an overturned lamp. The poor people stood by, wringing their hands and watching the flames.

“Why do they not try to save their house?” cried the Boy.

The father shook his head. “They can do nothing,” he answered. “They follow the teaching of the Pharisees, who say that it is unlawful to put out a fire on the Sabbath, because it is a labor.”

A little later the Boy saw a cripple with a crutch, sitting in the door of a cottage, looking very sad and lonely.

“Why does he not go with the others,” asked the Boy, “and hear the music at the Temple? That would make him happier. Can't he walk?”

“Yes,” answered the father, “he can hop along pretty well with his crutch on other days, but not on the Sabbath, for he would have to carry his crutch, and that would be labor.”

All the time he was in the Temple, watching the procession of priests and Levites and listening to the music, the Boy was thinking what the Sabbath meant, and whether it really rested people and made them happier.

The third day of the festival was the offering of the first-fruits of the new year's harvest. That was a joyous day. A sheaf of ripe barley was reaped and carried into the Temple and presented before the high altar with incense and music. The priests blessed the people, and the people shouted and sang for gladness.

The Boy's heart bounded in his breast as he joined in the song and thought of the bright summer begun, and the birds building their nests, and the flowers clothing the hills with beautiful colors, and the wide fields of golden grain waving in the wind. He was happy all day as he walked through the busy streets with his parents, buying some things that were needed for the home in Nazareth; and he was happy at night when he lay down under an olive-tree beside the tent, for the air was warm and gentle, and he fell asleep under the tree, dreaming of what he would see and do to-morrow.