oman, weeping for joy in the shadow behind him,
said very gently:

"Because thou hast saved the life of my little one, may the Lord bless
thee and keep thee; the Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be
gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give
thee peace."

IN THE HIDDEN WAY OF SORROW

Then again there was a silence in the Hall of Dreams, deeper and more
mysterious than the first interval, and I understood that the years of
Artaban were flowing very swiftly under the stillness of that clinging
fog, and I caught only a glimpse, here and there, of the river of his
life shining through the shadows that concealed its course.

I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking
everywhere for traces of the household that had come down from
Bethlehem, and finding them under the spreading sycamore-trees of
Heliopolis, and beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of New Babylon
beside the Nile--traces so faint and dim that they vanished before him
continually, as footprints on the hard river-sand glisten for a moment
with moisture and then disappear.

I saw him again at the foot of the pyramids, which lifted their sharp
points into the intense saffron glow of the sunset sky, changeless
monuments of the perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He
looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly
tried to read the meaning of the calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it,
indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had
said--the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that
never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in
that inscrutable smile--a promise that even the defeated should attain
a victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the
ignorant should be made wise, and the blind should see, and the
wandering should come into the haven at last?

I saw him again in an obscure house of Alexandria, taking counsel with
a Hebrew rabbi. The venerable man, bending over the rolls of parchment
on which the prophecies of Israel were written, read aloud the pathetic
words which foretold the sufferings of the promised Messiah--the
despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and the acquaintance
of grief.

"And remember, my son," said he, fixing his deep-set eyes upon the face
of Artaban, "the King whom you are seeking is not to be found in a
palace, nor among the rich and power