The Sad Shepherd | Page 9

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.

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