turbulent kings and peoples of earth shall be brought to
acknowledge the Messiah and pay homage to him. But this I
know. Those who seek him will do well to look among the poor
and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed."

So I saw the Other Wise Man again and again, travelling
from place to place, and searching among the people of the
dispersion, with whom the little family from Bethlehem might,
perhaps, have found a refuge. He passed through countries
where famine lay heavy upon the land, and the poor were crying
for bread. He made his dwelling in plague-stricken cities
where the sick were languishing in the bitter companionship of
helpless misery. He visited the oppressed and the afflicted
in the gloom of subterranean prisons, and the crowded
wretchedness of slave-markets, and the weary toil of
galley-ships. In all this populous and intricate world of
anguish, though he found none to worship, he found many to help.
He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick,
and comforted the captive; and his years passed more swiftly than
the weaver's shuttle that flashes back and forth through the loom
while the web grows and the pattern is completed.

It seemed almost as if he had forgotten his quest. But
once I saw him for a moment as he stood alone at sunrise,
waiting at the gate of a Roman prison. He had taken from a
secret resting-place in his bosom the pearl, the last of his
jewels. As he looked at it, a mellower lustre, a soft and
iridescent light, full of shifting gleams of azure and rose,
trembled upon its surface. It seemed to have absorbed some
reflection of the lost sapphire and ruby. So the secret