From St. Stephen’s Gate the smooth, broad road makes a steep descent down to the valley of the brook Kedron, then it climbs again around the shoulder of Olivet, where we stopped to look back at the city with the dome of the mosque of Omar glistening in the sun. The air was clear and the hills, with the light, shifting clouds above them, changed color every moment. Jamil had told us that the hills about Jerusalem bore always “a luxuriant crop of stones” and his words seemed true indeed, a crop made even more abundant by the heavy shell-fire of the months past. Still, in little square patches between the ridges, men were plowing. One plowman had a thin, patient ox and a donkey together under what seemed a heavy yoke. Here and there thick vines leaned against sunny walls as in the days when Jesus used them for the text of His great sermon “I—the vine: ye—the branches. Without me, ye can do nothing.” It was when we walked out a little from the main road to Bethany to look over into a deep valley that we saw a carpenter at work in his sunny yard, making yokes for the oxen. He worked deftly with his clumsy tools at his primitive bench. The court-yard was swept clean, save for the corner where the shavings fell. There were green things growing in a garden. After a moment a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked curiously at us but answered our smile. “Ing-leesh?” she queried. We shook our heads. “American,” we said very distinctly. The man at the bench turned quickly. A shower of words in the Hebrew tongue and a motion to wait answered us. The woman hurried into the house and was back in a moment with a photograph in her hand—a man, a woman, two children. The photograph was taken in _New York_! She pointed proudly to the word. As we were about to leave, being limited to conversation by means of nods, smiles and gestures only, a boy came from the rear of the house. He had great, dark, dreamy eyes, his head was a mass of thick curls, in his hands he had two irregular blocks of wood which he gave to his father. He smiled at us shyly, but turned to look again with frank interest and curiosity when his mother repeated the word American. It was hard to tear ourselves away from this picture of the carpenter with his little son and the mother at the door, but there was no excuse for lingering. We could only hope that this young son of a carpenter might sometime know the story of that other Son, of whose early days in the village of Nazareth he served so forcibly to remind us. [Illustration: It was here that He came to talk with one who seemed to understand—and there were so few.]