Soon he himself no longer saw it. Joseph of Nazareth came to the wooden
doors and drew them together, and the boy stood alone on the mountain-
side, trembling still, and wet with the dew of the night; but not weary,
not hungered, not athirst or afraid, only quaking with wonder and joy--
he, the little hunchback Zia, who had known no joy before since the hour
of his birth.

He sank upon the earth slowly in an exquisite peace--a peace that
thrilled his whole being as it stole over his limbs, deepening moment by
moment. His head drooped softly upon a cushion of moss. As his eyelids
fell, he saw the splendor of whiteness floating in the height of the
purple vault above him.

The dawn was breaking and yet the stars had not faded away. This was his
thought when his eyes first opened on a great one, greater than any
other in the sky, and of so pure a brilliance that it seemed as if even
the sun would not be bright enough to put it out. It hung high in the
paling blue, high as the white radiance; and as he lay and gazed, he
thought it surely moved. What new star was it that in that one night had
been born? He had watched the stars through so many desolate hours that
he knew each great one as a friend, and this one he had never seen
before.

The morning was cold, and his clothes were wet with dew, but he felt no
chill. He remembered; yes, he remembered. If he had lived in a vision
the day before, he was surely living in one yet. The Zia who had been
starved and beaten and driven out naked into the world, who had clutched
his thin breast and sobbed, writhing upon the earth, where was he? He
looked down upon his hands and saw the cracked and scaling palms, and it