“‘Till the sun rises,’ she said, ‘I shall rest here, I and my child. Rest you here, also, and sleep or watch as you will. Through the night my fire will burn; at dawn I shall let it die. It will have lighted and warmed us till the sun shall rise.’
“The preacher, having prayed, wrapped himself in his cloak, and sat at the foot of a great stone, watching the horses as they cropped the turf, lest they should stray and be lost; he mused profitably and seriously on his labours and doctrine. He heard the cropping of the horses, the murmur of the wind, and the trickle of a stream, fed by the deep still pool. He heard the woman singing softly to her child, in crooning snatches, in seeming unmindfulness of what she sang:
“‘He that is down need fear no fall,’ she crooned. ‘He that is low no pride——’
“She whispered wordless music as she rocked to and fro; then her song changed:
“‘O Tree of Beauty—Tree of Might,’ she sang, clear, faint, and high, in a monotonous chant, such as the chapel must have echoed to in the days when priests served before its ruined altar, and men and women knelt at the little shrine above which was the statue of a Mother and Child, ‘O Tree of Beauty—Tree of Beauty—Tree of Might——’
“The gipsy boy lay near the fire rejoicing in the warmth, looking sometimes up to the starlit sky, across which many a meteor flamed and died, sometimes at the shadows that leaped on the walls, sometimes into the woman’s face.
“‘What do you sing, sister?’ he said. ‘It is not a song of our people.’
“‘It is a song of all peoples, brother,’ she answered. ‘But they sing it in many tongues, and to many tunes.’
“The lad looked at her wonderingly; then he began to watch the stars again, and the little thin clouds that flew across the dark sky. At last he went to sleep with his head resting on his arm; sometimes he laughed and whispered as he slept, and thrice he sobbed. The woman bent down and cast over him a fold of her cloak, as he lay and dreamed under the stars.
“As for the third traveller, he, mindful of the sacredness of the place, stood not alone barefooted (for to cross the rock it had been needful to lay aside all covering of his feet), but also bareheaded he turned his face to the East, and perceiving the little side altar with the statue of the Mother, he approached and knelt before it, making the sign of the cross. There he knelt till dawn, for he was one used to prayer and vigil. The woman sat motionless, guarding the leaping flames; bread in her hands, the wine cup at her feet, her cloak enfolding the sleeping outcast, the swaddled babe on her knees. Now of her thoughts, which were measureless, there is no record I can read; nor can I tell of the gipsy boy’s dreams. But it is said the other two wanderers saw the place in very different fashion, and this is what they saw. The preacher beheld the dark circle of the enclosing oak trees, stirred by the wind; he saw the great grey stones reared by the dead pagans; he saw the turf, the horses, and the wild rabbits; he saw the pool shining in the firelight, the ruined chapel, the leaping flame, and the woman sitting beside it with her child on her knee, and the sleeping lad lying at her feet. And his eyes rested on her till he forgot the strife of creeds; he watched till she seemed to him the image or forthshowing of the motherhood of the world; and when next he preached he spoke no harsh doctrine, nor railed at idolatrous worship of a creature rather than of the Creator, as he was wont to do; but he spoke of the Love of God shown forth in human love, and above all in the great love of a mother for her little children; for this pure love, said he, is an example to us of the love that gives rather than takes, it is a symbol of the Divine Love, that, motherlike, feeds, sustains, and preserves all creatures.