leper. Perhaps, if he saw one, he would command him to be put to death."

And then he writhed upon the grass and sobbed again, his bent chest
almost bursting with his efforts to make no sound. He had always been
alone--always, always; but this loneliness was such as no young human
thing could bear. He was no longer alive; he was no longer a human
being. Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!

At last he slept, exhausted, and past his piteous, prostrate childhood
and helplessness the slow procession wound its way up the mountain road
toward the crescent of Bethlehem, knowing nothing of his nearness to its
unburdened comfort and simple peace.

When he awakened, the night had fallen, and he opened his eyes upon a
high vault of blue velvet darkness strewn with great stars. He saw this
at the first moment of his consciousness; then he realized that there
was no longer to be heard the sound either of passing hoofs or treading
feet. The travelers who had gone by during the day had probably reached
their journey's end, and gone to rest in their tents, or had found
refuge in the inclosing khan that gave shelter to wayfarers and their
beasts of burden.

But though there was no human creature near, and no sound of human voice
or human tread, a strange change had taken place in him. His loneliness
had passed away, and left him lying still and calm as though it had
never existed, as though the crushed and broken child who had plunged
from a precipice of woe into deadly, exhausted sleep was only a vague
memory of a creature in a dark past dream.

Had it been himself? Lying upon his back, seeing only the immensity of