camel, or a good, patient donkey. Camels and horses cost a great deal
of money, and Mary was very poor; so she rode on a quiet, safe
donkey, while Joseph walked by her side, leading him and leaning on
his stick. Mary was very young, and beautiful, I think, but Joseph was
a great deal older than she.

People dress nowadays, in those distant countries, just as they did so
many years ago, so we know that Mary must have worn a long, thick
dress, falling all about her in heavy folds, and that she had a soft
white veil over her head and neck, and across her face. Mary lived in
Nazareth, and the journey they were making was to Bethlehem, many
miles away.

They were a long time traveling, I am sure; for donkeys are slow,
though they are so careful, and Mary must have been very tired before
they came to the end of their journey.

They had traveled all day, and it was almost dark when they came near
to Bethlehem, to the town where the baby Christ was to be born. There
was the place they were to stay,--a kind of inn, or lodging-house, but
not at all like those you know about.

They have them today in that far-off country, just as they built them
so many years ago.

It was a low, flat-roofed, stone building, with no windows and only
one large door. There were no nicely furnished bed rooms inside, and
no soft white beds for the tired travelers; there were only little
places built into the stones of the wall, something like the berths on
steamboats nowadays, and each traveler brought his own bedding. No