The Sad Shepherd

The Sad Shepherd

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sad Shepherd, by Henry Van
Dyke This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Sad Shepherd
Author: Henry Van Dyke
Release Date: May 29, 2005 [EBook #15936]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SHEPHERD ***

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THE SAD SHEPHERD
[Illustration]
THE SAD SHEPHERD
A CHRISTMAS STORY BY HENRY VAN DYKE
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1911
Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Published October, 1911
THE SAD SHEPHERD

I
DARKNESS

Out of the Valley of Gardens, where a film of new-fallen snow lay
smooth as feathers on the breast of a dove, the ancient Pools of
Solomon looked up into the night sky with dark, tranquil eyes,
wide-open and passive, reflecting the crisp stars and the small, round
moon. The full springs, overflowing on the hill-side, melted their way
through the field of white in winding channels; and along their course
the grass was green even in the dead of winter.
But the sad shepherd walked far above the friendly valley, in a region
where ridges of gray rock welted and scarred the back of the earth, like
wounds of half-forgotten strife and battles long ago. The solitude was
forbidding and disquieting; the keen air that searched the wanderer had
no pity in it; and the myriad glances of the night were curiously cold.
His flock straggled after him. The sheep, weather-beaten and dejected,
followed the path with low heads nodding from side to side, as if they
had traveled far and found little pasture. The black, lop-eared goats
leaped upon the rocks, restless and ravenous, tearing down the tender
branches and leaves of the dwarf oaks and wild olives. They reared up
against the twisted trunks and crawled and scrambled among the
boughs. It was like a company of gray downcast friends and a troop of
merry little black devils following the sad shepherd afar off.
He walked looking on the ground, paying small heed to them. Now and
again, when the sound of pattering feet and panting breath and the
rustling and rending among the copses fell too far behind, he drew out
his shepherd's pipe and blew a strain of music, shrill and plaintive,
quavering and lamenting through the hollow night. He waited while the
troops of gray and black scuffled and bounded and trotted near to him.
Then he dropped the pipe into its place again and strode forward,
looking on the ground.
The fitful, shivery wind that rasped the hill-top, fluttered the rags of his
long mantle of Tyrian blue, torn by thorns and stained by travel. The
rich tunic of striped silk beneath it was worn thin, and the girdle about
his loins had lost all its ornaments of silver and jewels. His curling hair
hung down dishevelled under a turban of fine linen, in which the gilt
threads were frayed and tarnished; and his shoes of soft leather were
broken by the road. On his brown fingers the places of the vanished
rings were still marked in white skin. He carried not the long staff nor
the heavy nail-studded rod of the shepherd, but a slender stick of carved

cedar battered and scratched by hard usage, and the handle, which must
once have been of precious metal, was missing.
He was a strange figure for that lonely place and that humble
occupation-a branch of faded beauty from some royal garden tossed by
rude winds into the wilderness-a pleasure craft adrift, buffeted and
broken, on rough seas.
But he seemed to have passed beyond caring. His young face was
frayed and threadbare as his garments. The splendor of the moonlight
flooding the wild world meant as little to him as the hardness of the
rugged track which he followed. He wrapped his tattered mantle closer
around him, and strode ahead, looking on the ground.
As the path dropped from the summit of the ridge toward the Valley of
Mills and passed among huge broken rocks, three men sprang at him
from the shadows. He lifted his stick, but let it fall again, and a strange
ghost of a smile twisted his face as they gripped him and threw him
down.
"You are rough beggars," he said. "Say what you want, you are
welcome to it."
"Your money, dog of a courtier," they muttered fiercely; "give us your
golden collar, Herod's hound, quick, or you die!"
"The quicker the better," he answered, closing his eyes.
The bewildered flock of sheep and goats, gathered in