“Yes,” said Mary Christmas. And then she did a strange thing. Raising her right hand to her head, she touched her forehead lightly with her fingers, then her breast, and then her shoulders from left to right, closing her eyes as she did so. Her still face awed the children. They had never seen that sign before. “But what if anyone should climb the mountain to its very top?” they persisted, breaking the silence once she had opened her eyes. “Couldn’t they see it if it is there?” “No,” said Mary Christmas. “Only someone holy could see it--someone very, very good. The Virgin Mary--or, perhaps, your father.” Years afterward they were to laugh at the remembrance of Mary Christmas’ words and at the picture of Father Wescott toiling up Ararat with all the zeal which he had ever shown on the eve of a Republican victory. But now they were impressed only by the reverence in her voice. Good and wise as they had always known their father to be, they had never thought him fit for such celestial company. “Once a saint, a holy man, tried to climb the mountain to see the ark,” continued Mary Christmas. “That was hundreds of years ago. His name was Saint Jacob. For three days he went up and up through the snow and ice. But each morning, when he woke from sleep, he found himself back at the same place where he had started the day before. Then an angel came to him with a great plank of wood. The angel told Saint Jacob that God would let no one walk on the top of the mountain, for it was sacred; but that He had sent the saint a piece of the ark as a reward for his patience. And now that wood is in the great church at Etchmiadzin.” “Say it again, Mary Christmas,” they begged, forgetting Saint Jacob and the ark in this unfamiliar, ringing word. “Say it again--_please_!” She repeated it, and they said it after her, against those days when they should retell her stories to one another and to all their friends. “Have you seen the wood yourself, Mary Christmas, in the great church?” “I have touched it with my hand,” said Mary Christmas, again pausing a moment to make that mysterious sign on forehead and breast. “Once, when I was a little girl like Mary and Cynthia, I was ill. I could not walk or play. My father took me to Etchmiadzin--a long journey in a donkey-cart. I remember how tired I got and how my bones ached. When we came to Etchmiadzin, we went straight to the great church inside the high walls. It was dark, with lights only at the great altar, and sweet smells everywhere. The priest there told me to place my hand on the wood. Then he made a prayer, and I was well again. On the way back home I sprang from the cart and ran ahead of the donkey. My father--he cried for joy!”