The place where the Jews now met was at Je-ru-sa-lem, and Je-sus was twelve years old when he went up for the first time, with Jo-seph and Ma-ry, to keep the Feast of the Weeks.
There was a great crowd there, and friends to meet and talk with, and it must have been a hard task to keep track of the young folks, who found so much to see and to hear that was new and strange.
When the days of the feast were at an end, Jo-seph and Ma-ry set out for their home in Naz-a-reth.
They had gone out with a band of friends and folks from the same town, and were to come back in the same way. It was not safe for them to go by them-selves, for there were waste lands to cross where bands of thieves lay in wait for a chance to rob and to kill those who came their way.
NAZ-A-RETH.
Some rode on mules, some on horse-back, and some had to walk all the way. Je-sus was not with Jo-seph and Ma-ry, but they thought he must be with some of the friends or kins-folk. But when at the end of a day's ride he came not near them, they sought for him in the groups of friends and kins-folk, where there were lads of his own age.
JE-SUS WITH THE DOC-TORS IN THE TEM-PLE.
And when they found him not, they went back to Je-ru-sa-lem, and sought for him with hearts full of grief, for they knew not what harm might have come to him.