hour by the Jew of Chincoteague, a present--to-morrow's Christmas--for
thy neighbors of this Christian island!"

He stirred the fire. Death had no terrors for him, who had seen it by
land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He
laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire.
Looking up from the living child's face, he caught the sparkle of the
crucifix he had discovered, where it stood in the narrow window-sill.
There were gems of various colors in it, and they reflected the
firelight lustrously, like a slender chandelier, or, as the Jew
remembered in the version of the Evangels, like the gifts those
bearded wise men, of whom he might resemble one, brought to the manger
of the infant Christ--gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Struck
by the conceit, he looked again at the baby's face--the baby but a few
days or weeks old--and he felt, in spite of himself, a softness and
pity.

"It might be true," he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and
unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this
preacher, _did_ behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn,
eighteen hundred and forty years ago."

He looked again at the cross. In the relief of the night against the
window-pane its jewels shone like the only living things in the hovel.
A figure was extended upon this cross, and every nail was a precious
stone; the crown of thorns was all diamonds.

"It might be true," he said again, "that on a cross-beam like that,
the manger baby perished for some audacity--as I might be put to death
if I mocked the usages of a whole nation, as this preacher has done."