For many a year after that time, the Syrian herders say, Ben Ezra tended his sheep on the hills. Through summer and winter he abode in the pasture place, his only respite from toil being the rare visits he made to the village where his wife and wee ones dwelt; but he never was weary, and his flocks never went astray. To his children and his children’s children he told the story of how he went back to the hills that night and how he was rewarded, bidding them to be ever mindful of the fact that he who is tender to the sheep serves well a higher Master. And as years rolled into decades and centuries passed away, all the herders of Judea came to know the story and to shape their lives by it, so that to this day the Syrian shepherds have remained men of tender heart and simple faith. And when strangers visit the land and wonder at the gentleness of the keepers of the flocks, some old grandfather or brown-eyed boy is ever ready to explain what it is that has kept them sweet and serene, and tells the story of Ben Ezra, the shepherd who on the wonderful night went back to the hills, and so came late to Bethlehem.
One autumn morning a thousand years ago, a boy and a girl stood in a forest path beside the Rhine. His great eyes, brown and full of feeling, looked wistfully into the face of the golden-haired maiden, while his clumsy hands stroked tenderly the glossy feathers of a young raven.
“Father says it is a poor gift to offer a princess,” he said as he held the bird toward her, “but I have nothing else. Will you please take it?”
Blue-eyed Willeswind smiled. She was the petted child of a baron and accustomed to receiving gifts, but something about this boy’s earnestness touched her in an unusual way. He was only a forester’s son, with but little to break the monotony of his life of toil, and it seemed wonderful that he should be willing to part with his only treasure.
“I cannot take your only pet, Rupert,” she said kindly, “but it is good of you to offer it.”
Disappointment crept into the boy’s dark eyes.
“Oh, please,” he pleaded. “I want you to have it, because you bound up my foot with healing herbs when I tore it on the brambles in the wood. Please take it.”
The girl answered with a smile that made her face very lovely, “Of course I shall take it, and I will keep it always because you gave it to me.” Reaching over, she took the fluttering creature from the big dark hands, and stroked it gently as it quivered at the strange touch. Then she made her way back to the castle over a carpet of fallen leaves, while Rupert the forester’s son hurried to the hunting lodge, happy in the thought that he had made a gift to her who had been kind to him.