The Coming of the King. Bernie Babcock

of flowers, blood red anemones, spotted tulips and blue star blossoms. In the winter, with the bare gray stones scattered about in confusion, this place was dreary as poverty itself. But now the wealth of beauty that lay over it suggested the joy of the Passover to the whole world.

      It was while picking golden narcissus in her lily valley, Mary's heart was gladdened by the sudden outburst of a nightingale in a thicket close at hand. Careful watching was rewarded by a sight, not only of the singer but of a nest with three little ones in it. While she yet peeped at the nestlings, a man appeared with an ax. He was looking for boughs with which to thatch his booth and his eye was on the nightingale's home. Taking the nest from its hiding-place Mary tucked it under her veil, wrapped her lily stems in wet leaves and started away. A moment later a stroke of the ax felled the bush that had housed the birds. Looking back Mary saw the mother bird fluttering wildly about over the cast-off pile of leaves. "Knowing not her little ones are safe she suffers pain," she said to herself.

      She had not gone far along the roadway when she came upon the tent of a Bedouin. A woman holding an infant on one arm had just stepped out. She looked about anxiously until her eye caught sight of a goat grazing at no great distance. By its broken tether the goat had made its escape. The milk and cheese of the family depended on the goat. In no spoken word could Mary converse with the woman, but she understood, and holding out her arms for the child, pointed toward the goat. The swarthy woman nodded, placed the little brown baby in the arms of the unknown friend, and hurried after the goat.

      Sitting on a flat stone behind the tent, Mary, who had for the moment removed from her bosom the veil in which she had wrapped the nestlings and was quieting their calls for their mother by fitting her warm palm close over them, was suddenly startled by what seemed to be an infinite throb, a passion unspeakable and mysterious. She did not know that the mouth of a sucking child is a vortex in which the interplay of universal forces starts into vibration a thousand generations of instinctive motherhood. Nor did the little brown baby know aught of this. Moved by the first impulse of Nature which makes every mother a universal mother, the instinct of self-preservation had turned the face of the child to the breast of Mary. Looking about with a glance of apprehension lest she should be discovered in some unworthy act, she hastily moved the infant from her arm and the nestlings from her veil which she gathered over her shoulders and bosom. The birds she tied in a loose end of the veil and hid in the front of her garment. Meantime the baby was crying lustily and making feeble and aimless motions of protest or desire with its tiny brown fingers. Mary was trying to quiet it by walking when the Bedouin woman returned with the goat.

      The sun was shining high and the roads were peopled with pilgrims as she made her way back to Bethany with her nestlings and narcissus. But the way did not seem long, for out of her visit to the valley of lilies had come a new mystery for her mind to dwell upon—the eternal mystery of motherhood awakening. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings shall come wisdom." The words of one of the Rabbis kept coming to her. But what was the wisdom? Her only impression at the time was the strange suggestion that because both nestlings and Bedouin babe had mistaken her for their mother, they must be brothers. When Mary reached home she found Martha and her guests in a state of pleased excitement. News had just been brought by Lazarus that Zador Ben Amon had arrived in Jerusalem after a long journey in far lands, and would sup with them the day following. Especially had he sent his respects to Mary.