The cross, an object as high as one of the window-panes, and suffused
with the exuding dyes of its jewels, took now a dewy lustre, as if
weeping precious gum and amber. The Jew felt an instant's sense of
superstition, which he dashed away, and placing the child, already
sleeping, before the fire, awakened rapacity led him to hunt the hovel
over. He found nothing but a few religious books, and amongst them a
leather-covered Testament, which he opened and read with
insensibility--passing on, at length, to interest, then to
fascination, at last to rage and defiance--the opening chapters and
the close of the story of Jesus.

"Now, by the sufferings of my patient race! I will do a thing unlike
myself, to prove this testimony a libel. Here is a child more homeless
than this carpenter, Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming
of David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves
I have imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will
rob the shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a
Hebrew. Yea, if I can make it so, a Rabbi of Israel!"

Issachar looked again at the cross. Day was breaking in the window
behind it, and the rich light of its gems was obscurer, but its form
and proportions seemed to have expanded--perhaps because he had worn
his eyes reading by the firelight--and the outstretched figure looked
large as humanity, and the cross lofty and real, as that which it was
made to commemorate. He hid it beneath his garment, and walked forth
into the gray dawn of Christmas. One star remained in mid-heaven,
whiter than the day. It poised over the hovel of the dead like
something new-born in the sky, and unacquainted with its fellow orbs.