"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given--" Doyne sprang from his chair, which fell behind him with a crash. "Man--what the devil are you saying?" Then McCurdie rose and met Biggleswade's eyes staring at him through the great round spectacles, and Biggleswade turned and met the eyes of Doyne. A pulsation like the beating of wings stirred the air. 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 in the instinctive fashion of 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, Doyne, 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. [Illustration: INSTINCTIVELY THEY ALL KNELT DOWN.] Instinctively they all knelt down together to discover, if possible, and administer ignorantly to, its wants. The scene had the appearance of an adoration. * * * * * Then these three wise, lonely, childless men who, in furtherance of their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and simple things of life and from the kindly ways of their brethren, and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an inscrutable Providence had led them, as it had led three Wise Men of old, on a Christmas morning long ago, to a nativity which should give them a new wisdom, a new link with humanity, a new spiritual outlook, a new hope. And, when their watch was ended, they wrapped up the babe with precious care, and carried him with them, an inalienable joy and possession, into the great world. [Illustration: CARRIED WITH THEM AN INALIENABLE JOY AND POSSESSION INTO THE GREAT WORLD.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Mystery, by William J. Locke