mind; he hesitated, but at length
replied, "The offer is kind. Whether there be room for us or not
in the house, we will go see your people. Let me speak to the
gate-keeper myself. I will return quickly."

And, putting the leading-strap in the stranger's hand, he pushed
into the stirring crowd.

The keeper sat on a great cedar block outside the gate. Against the
wall behind him leaned a javelin. A dog squatted on the block by
his side.

"The peace of Jehovah be with you," said Joseph, at last confronting
the keeper.

"What you give, may you find again; and, when found, be it many
times multiplied to you and yours," returned the watchman, gravely,
though without moving.

"I am a Bethlehemite," said Joseph, in his most deliberate way.
"Is there not room for--"

"There is not."

"You may have heard of me--Joseph of Nazareth. This is the house
of my fathers. I am of the line of David."

These words held the Nazarene's hope. If they failed him, further
appeal was idle, even that of the offer of many shekels. To be a
son of Judah was one thing--in the tribal opinion a great thing;
to be of the house of David was yet another; on the tongue of a
Hebrew there could be no higher boast. A thousand years and more
had passed since the boyish shepherd became the successor of Saul
and founded a royal family. Wars, calamities, other kings, and the
countless obscuring processes of time had, as respects fortune,
lowered his descendants to the common Jewish level; the bread
they ate came to them of toil never more humble; yet they had
the benefit of history sacredly kept, of which genealogy was the
first chapter and the last; they could not become unknown, while,
wherever they went In Israel, acquaintance drew after it a respect
amounting to reverence.

If this were so in Jerusalem and elsewhere, certainly one of the
sacred line might reasonably rely upon it at the door of the khan of
Bethlehem. To say, as Joseph said, "This is the house of my fathers,"
was to say the truth most simply and literally; for it was the very
house Ruth ruled as the wife of Boaz, the very house in which Jesse
and his ten sons, David the youngest, were born, the very house in
which Samuel came seeking a king, and found him; the very house
which David gave to the son of Barzillai, the friendly Gileadite;
the very house in which Jeremiah, by prayer, rescued the remnant
of his race flying before the Babylonians.

The appeal was not without effect.