DARKNESS OVER GALILEE
John has returned home; Jesus is asleep in the home of Simon's mother-in-law; Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her children, save Jesus and Ruth, are sleeping under their little open tent shelter on the pebbled beach. Every lodging in Tiberias, Magdala, Bethsaida and Capernaum is occupied by strangers, while more than ten thousand souls overcome by fatigue have tonight lopped down in groups here and there upon the shore of the renowned inland lake, the Sea of Galilee.
The evening star has disappeared beyond the western hills, while spangled Orion and the Pleiades sisters seem lingering as though to look down in silent pity on slumbering old Nazareth, whose religious zealots have thrust out in bitter scorn the man whose lamp of light will shine upon the mysterious way called Death, when other lights have all grown dim.
It is now after midnight. Ruth and Magdalene are in fond embrace, while Aunt Susanna on a reclining divan amid a profusion of pretty rugs and bolstering pillows is plying questions to Ruth concerning her brother, Jesus.
"Ruth, how long has it been since your brother began to talk this way?"
"Really, Aunt, I cannot say. He has practically been the head of our family since before father died. He always seemed to know if a sick person was going to get well, but, of course, as Lena knows, he said and did many things that we did not notice then, which look strange to us now. I remember one time when we were small we all went over to Saffuriyeh to spend the day with mother's folks, and while going over, he said to us that we must all be kind to grandpa for we would never see him again, and he did die in a few days."
"Did he ever call himself the son of God?"
"Oh, no, we never thought of such a thing, but he often spoke of God as my father instead of our father. The first time we noticed anything unusual was when he, with a lot of other men, went to the Jordan, near Jerusalem, to be baptized by a man named John. When they returned home, he was preaching different from what he used to preach. Of course, as mother says, he may have had divine aid all along and not told us, nor even understood it himself."
"Did your mother love him better than she did you younger children?"