"Ah, you have been in Beth-Dagon," the man said, his face softening
yet more. "What wanderers we of Judah are! I have been away from
the ridge--old Ephrath, as our father Jacob called it-- for many
years. When the proclamation went abroad requiring all Hebrews to
be numbered at the cities of their birth-- That is my business
here, Rabbi."

Joseph's face remained stolid as a mask, while he remarked, "I have
come for that also--I and my wife."

The stranger glanced at Mary and kept silence. She was looking
up at the bald top of Gedor. The sun touched her upturned
face, and filled the violet depths of her eyes, and upon her
parted lips trembled an aspiration which could not have been to
a mortal. For the moment, all the humanity of her beauty seemed
refined away: she was as we fancy they are who sit close by the
gate in the transfiguring light of Heaven. The Beth-Dagonite saw
the original of what, centuries after, came as a vision of genius
to Sanzio the divine, and left him immortal.

"Of what was I speaking? Ah! I remember. I was about to say that
when I heard of the order to come here, I was angry. Then I thought
of the old hill, and the town, and the valley falling away into
the depths of Cedron; of the vines and orchards, and fields of
grain, unfailing since the days of Boaz and Ruth, of the familiar
mountains--Gedor here, Gibeah yonder, Mar Elias there--which, when
I was a boy, were the walls of the world to me; and I forgave the
tyrants and came--I, and Rachel, my wife, and Deborah and Michal,
our roses of Sharon."