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Ammiel saluted her and kneeled down to look at the child. He saw nothing different from other young children. The mother waited for him to speak of angels, as the other shepherds had done. The sad shepherd did not speak, but only looked. And as he looked his face changed.

“You have suffered pain and danger and sorrow for his sake,” he said gently.

“They are past,” she answered, “and for his sake I have suffered them gladly.”

“He is very little and helpless; you must bear many troubles for his sake.”

“To care for him is my joy, and to bear him lightens my burden.”

“He does not know you, he can do nothing for you.”

“But I know him. I have carried him under my heart, he is my son and my king.”

“Why do you love him?”

The mother looked up at the sad shepherd with a great reproach in her soft eyes. Then her look grew pitiful as it rested on his face.

“You are a sorrowful man,” she said.

“I am a wicked man,” he answered.

She shook her head gently.

“I know nothing of that,” she said, “but you must be very sorrowful, since you are born of a woman and yet you ask a mother why she loves her child. I love him for love’s sake, because God has given him to me.”

So the mother Mary leaned over her little son again and began to croon a song as if she were alone with him.

But Ammiel was still there, watching and thinking and beginning to remember. It came back to him that there was a woman in Galilee who had wept when he was rebuked; whose eyes had followed him when he was unhappy, as if she longed to do something for him; whose voice had broken and dropped silent while she covered her tear-stained face when he went away.

His thoughts flowed swiftly and silently toward her and after her like rapid waves of light. There was a thought of her bending over a little child in her lap, singing softly for pure joy,-and the child was himself. There was a thought of her lifting a little child to the breast that had borne him as a burden and a pain, to nourish him there as a comfort and a treasure,-and the child was himself. There was a thought of her watching and tending and guiding a little child from day to day, from year to year, putting tender arms around him, bending over his first wavering steps, rejoicing in his joys, wiping away the tears from his eyes, as he had never tried to wipe her tears away,-and the child was himself. She had done everything for the child’s sake, but what had the child done for her sake? And the child was himself: that was what he had come to,-after the nightfire had burned out, after the darkness had grown thin and melted in the thoughts that pulsed through it like rapid waves of light,-that was what he had come to in the early morning: himself, a child in his mother’s arms.

Then he arose and went out of the grotto softly, making the threefold sign of reverence; and the eyes of Mary followed him with kind looks.

Joseph of Nazareth was still waiting outside the door.

“How was it that you did not see the angels?” he asked. “Were you not with the other shepherds?”

“No,” answered Ammiel, “I was asleep. But I have seen the mother and the child. Blessed be the house that holds them.”

“You are strangely clad for a shepherd,” said Joseph. “Where do you come from?”

“From a far country,” replied Ammiel; “from a country that you have never visited.”

“Where are you going now?” asked Joseph.

“I am going home,” answered Ammiel, “to my mother’s and my father’s house in Galilee.”

“Go in peace, friend,” said Joseph.

And the sad shepherd took up his battered staff, and went on his way rejoicing.