behind the other, and rode out of Nazareth across the stone bridge, by
which they had come.

The setting of the sun behind the forest made the woods aflame, and dyed
the village blood-red. Exhausted with running and entreating, the cure
had thrown himself upon the snow, in front of the church, and his
servant stood near him. They stared upon the street and the orchard,
both thronged with the peasants in their best clothes. Before many
thresholds, parents with dead children on their knees bewailed with ever
fresh amaze their bitter grief. Others still lamented over the children
where they had died, near a barrel, under a barrow, or at the edge of a
pool. Others carried away the dead in silence. There were some who began
to wash the benches, the stools, the tables, the blood-stained shifts,
and to pick up the cradles which had been thrown into the street. Mother
by mother moaned under the trees over the dead bodies which lay upon the
grass, little mutilated bodies which they recognized by their woollen
frocks. Those who were childless moved aimlessly through the square,
stopping at times in front of the bereaved, who wailed and sobbed in
their sorrow. The men, who no longer wept, sullenly pursued their
strayed animals, around which the barking dogs coursed; or, in silence,
repaired so far their broken windows and rifled roofs. As the moon
solemnly rose through the quietudes of the sky, deep silence as of sleep
descended upon the village, where now not the shadow of a living thing
stirred.





SAINT NICHOLAS EVE