conception entered into the scheme of life to
which he was further swayed by the reflection that the vengeance
he dreamed of, in connection with his individual wrongs, would be
more surely found in some of the ways of war than in any pursuit
of peace.

The feelings with which he listened to Balthasar can be now understood.
The story touched two of the most sensitive points of his being so
they rang within him. His heart beat fast--and faster still when,
searching himself, he found not a doubt either that the recital
was true in every particular, or that the Child so miraculously
found was the Messiah. Marvelling much that Israel rested so dead
to the revelation, and that he had never heard of it before that
day, two questions presented themselves to him as centring all it
was at that moment further desirable to know:

Where was the Child then?

And what was his mission?

With apologies for the interruptions, he proceeded to draw out
the opinions of Balthasar, who was in nowise loath to speak.

CHAPTER XVI

"If I could answer you," Balthasar said, in his simple, earnest,
devout way--"oh, if I knew where he is, how quickly I would go to
him! The seas should not stay me, nor the mountains."

"You have tried to find him, then?" asked Ben-Hur.

A smile flitted across the face of the Egyptian.

"The first task I charged myself with after leaving the shelter given
me in the desert"--Balthasar cast a grateful look at Ilderim--"was to
learn what became of the Child. But a year had passed, and I dared
not go up to Judea in person, for Herod still held the throne
bloody-minded as ever. In Egypt, upon my return, there were a
few friends to believe the wonderful things I told them of what
I had seen and heard--a few who rejoiced with me that a Redeemer
was born--a few who never tired of the story. Some of them came
up for me looking after the Child. They went first to Bethlehem,
and found there the khan and the cave; but the steward--he who sat
at the gate the night of the birth, and the night we came following
the star--was gone. The king had taken him away, and he was no more
seen."

"But they found some proofs, surely," said Ben-Hur, eagerly.

"Yes, proofs written in blood--a village in mourning; mothers yet
crying for their little ones. You must know, when Herod heard
of our flight, he sent down and slew the youngest-born of the
children of Bethlehem. Not one escaped. The faith of my messengers
was confi