The bells were silver; the camels, as we have seen, were of unusual size and whiteness, and moved with singular stateliness; the trappings told of the desert and of long journeys thereon, and also of ample means in possession of the owners, who sat under the little canopies exactly as they appeared at the rendezvous beyond the Jebel. Yet it was not the bells or the camels, or their furniture, or the demeanor of the riders, that were so wonderful; it was the question put by the man who rode foremost of the three.
The approach to Jerusalem from the north is across a plain which dips southward, leaving the Damascus Gate in a vale or hollow. The road is narrow, but deeply cut by long use, and in places difficult on account of the cobbles left loose and dry by the washing of the rains. On either side, however, there stretched, in the old time, rich fields and handsome olive-groves, which must, in luxurious growth, have been beautiful, especially to travellers fresh from the wastes of the desert. In this road, the three stopped before the party in front of the Tombs.
“Good people,” said Balthasar, stroking his plaited beard, and bending from his cot, “is not Jerusalem close by?”
“Yes,” answered the woman into whose arms the child had shrunk. “If the trees on yon swell were a little lower you could see the towers on the market-place.”
Balthasar gave the Greek and the Hindoo a look, then asked,
“Where is he that is born King of the Jews?”
The women gazed at each other without reply.
“You have not heard of him?”
“No.”
“Well, tell everybody that we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”