Uncle Joseph did not remember from whom she had this hut. One evening an
old man with a white beard, who seemed to be at least two hundred years
old, and who could hardly drag himself along, asked alms of this forlorn
woman, as he passed her dwelling.

"Sit down, father," she replied; "everything here belongs to all the
world, since it comes from all the world."

He sat down on a stone before the door. He shared the woman's bread, her
bed of leaves, and her house.

He did not leave her again, for he had come to the end of his travels.

"It was Our Lady the Virgin who permitted this, monsieur," Joseph added,
"it being a woman who had opened her door to a Judas, for this old
vagabond was the Wandering Jew. It was not known at first in the country,
but the people suspected it very soon, because he was always walking; it
had become a sort of second nature to him."

And suspicion had been aroused by still another thing. This woman, who
kept that stranger with her, was thought to be a Jewess, for no one had
ever seen her at church. For ten miles around no one ever called her
anything else but the Jewess.

When the little country children saw her come to beg they cried out:
"Mamma, mamma, here is the Jewess!"

The old man and she began to go out together into the neighboring
districts, holding out their hands at all the doors, stammering