The three wise men shivered with a queer exaltation. Something strange, mystical, dynamic had happened. It was as if scales had fallen from their eyes and they saw with a new vision. They stood together humbly, divested of all their greatness, touching one another like children, as if seeking mutual protection, and they looked, with one accord, irresistibly compelled, at the child.
At last McCurdie unbent his black brows and said hoarsely:
“It was not the Angel of Death, Boyne, but another Messenger that drew us here.”
The tiredness seemed to pass away from the great administrator’s face, and he nodded his head with the calm of a man who has come to the quiet heart of a perplexing mystery.
“It’s true,” he murmured. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. Unto the three of us.”
Biggleswade took off his great round spectacles and wiped them.
“Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar. But where are the gold, frankincense and myrrh?”
“In our hearts, man,” said McCurdie.
The babe cried and stretched its tiny limbs.
Instinctively they all knelt down together to discover if possible and administer ignorantly to its wants. The scene had the appearance of an adoration.