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Herod and the New Born King
By nontanye Perry
OX a late December afternoon, more than nineteen hundred years ago, the road leading thru the valley which sweeps up to the twain heights where Bethlehem stretches, was thronged with a motley crowd of travelers. A decree of Caesar had ordered every citizen, with his family, into the city of his birth to be counted for taxation. Men on foot ran hither and thither; men on horseback screamed to men on camels; women seated in pillions upon donkeys peeped anxiously out from their veils; children wailed; boys were peddling bread and fruits; others were leading fractious sheep or cows; all were talking shrilly in all the tongues of Syria.
At the gates of a kahn, just outside the city walls, a keeper was sitting on a block of cedar, a javelin leaning on the wall beside him. His face and manner were calm and unruffled, tho he was besieged by a throng of clamoring men showing varied expressions of impatience, resentment or anxiety.
"The kahn is already filled. There remains not even one place vacant," he reiterated patiently to one group after another, and one after another they withdrew, noisily complaining, to make for themselves camps as best they might on the hills surrounding the city.
The winter afternoon was short. Shadows lengthened over the valleys, shutting out the peaks of Gedar and Gibeah, darkening the terraced vineyards and olive groves. Nightfall was very near, when a man, apparently about fifty years of age a look of deep concern upon his earnest, kindly face.
hurried a panting donkey up the last steep slope to the gate.
"Can you not give me a place?'' he urged; his voice was singularly gentle, even though tinged with sharp anxiety. "I am Joseph of Nazareth and this is the house of my fathers. I am of the line of David."
"Peace be with yon, Joseph of Xazareth. I grieve that there is not a place left, neither in the chambers nor in the court, nor even upon the roof."
The traveler glanced toward the figure of a woman, enveloped in a loose robe of woolen stuff, her face hidden by a white veil, who was sitting upon the donkey.
"It is Mary, my wife," he said anxiously. "She is very delicate and your nights here are cold. I cannot let her lie out of doors, it will kill her."
As he spoke, the woman pushed her veil aside, disclosing a face young and beautiful, touched with a rare, exalted light.
"Fear not, my husband." she said. "no harm will come to me."
Before either man could speak again. a slender, dark-eyed maiden, who had crept up close to the keeper and gazed with wondering eyes upon Mary's glowing face, touched his arm timidly. "Father," she said, and whispered softly.
"Is 't so. little one?" the father said. looking again at the young wife and the anxious, gentle face of the husband. "Well, come you in. friends. Such as 1 have, I will give. Room you may havc> in the cave. Shelter and warmth are there and many of your forefathers must have lain there. 'The mangers