26 The Pilgrim of the Night

In the first sweet hours of the restful night
Isidore became aware that he was walking
among strange fields on a hillside, and on the
top of a hill some distance away there were
the white walls and low flat-roofed houses of
a little town; and some one was speaking to
him and saying, “These are the fields in
which the Shepherds watched, and that rocky
pathway leads up the slope to Bethlehem.”

At the sound of the voice Isidore hastily
looked round, and behind him was the pil-
grim, and yet he knew that it was not truly
the pilgrim, but an Angel disguised in pil-
grim’s weeds. And when he would have
fallen at the Angel’s feet, the Angel stopped
him and said, “ Be not: afraid; I have been
sent to show thee all the holy places that
thy heart has longed to see.”

On valley and hill and field and stream
there now shone so clear and wonderful a
light that even a long way off the very
flowers by the roadside were distinctly visi-
ble. Without effort and without weariness
Isidore glided from place to place as though
it were a dream. And I cannot tell the half
of what he saw, for the Angel took him to
the village where Jesus was a little child,