There were houses in the Valley of the Mills; and in some of them
lights were burning; and the drone of the mill-stones, where the women
were still grinding, came out into the night like the humming of drowsy
bees. As the women heard the pattering and bleating of the flock, they
wondered who was passing so late. One of them, in a house where there
was no mill but many lights, came to the door and looked out laughing,
her face and bosom bare.

But the sad shepherd did not stay. His long shadow and the confused
mass of lesser shadows behind him drifted down the white moonlight,
past the yellow bars of lamplight that gleamed from the doorways. It
seemed as if he were bound to go somewhere and would not delay.

Yet with all his haste to be gone, it was plain that he thought little
of where he was going. For when he came to the foot of the valley,
where the paths divided, he stood between them staring vacantly,
without a desire to turn him this way or that. The imperative of choice
halted him like a barrier. The balance of his mind hung even because
both scales were empty. He could act, he could go, for his strength was
untouched; but he could not choose, for his will was broken within him.

The path to the left went up toward the little town of Bethlehem, with
huddled roofs and walls in silhouette along the double-crested hill. It
was dark and forbidding as a closed fortress. The sad shepherd looked
at it with indifferent eyes; there was nothing there to draw him. The
path to the right wound through rock-strewn valleys toward the Dead
Sea. But rising out of that crumpled wilderness, a mile or two away,
the smooth white ribbon of a chariot-road lay upon the flank of a
cone-shaped mountain and curled in loops toward its peak. There the