Ma-ry made haste and went to the land of Ju-dah, and to the house of E-liz-a-beth and Zach-a-ri-as, where she spent three months. Then she came back to her own home. Jo-seph was the name of Ma-ry's hus-band; and he was a Jew, of King Da-vid's line. They were both poor, and Jo-seph had to work hard at his trade. He was a car-pen-ter. God gave Zach-a-ri-as and E-liz-a-beth the son that he said they should have. And when the child was eight days old, the friends and kins-folk came to see it and to give it a name. Most of them said, Call him Zach-a-ri-as. But the child's mo-ther said, Not so. He shall be called John. And they said, There is none of thy kin-dred that is called by this name. And they made signs to the fa-ther that he should let them know by what name the child should be called. And the fa-ther sat down and wrote: His name is John. And they all thought this strange, as he had not told them of the an-gel who spoke to him in the house of God. As soon as Zach-a-ri-as wrote these words his speech came back to him, and he gave praise and thanks to God. And all the folks in that part of the land heard of these things, and they said, What sort of a child shall this be? And the boy grew tall and strong, and the Lord blest him, and he went out and dwelt in the woods and waste lands till he was a man, and it was time for him to preach to the Jews and to tell them of Je-sus. Now the king of Rome was called a Ce-sar, in the speech of that land, and the Jews had to do just as he said, for they were his slaves. And he made a law that the names of all the Jews should be put down in a book, that it might be known what tribe they came from, and what they were worth. Then, too, it would not be a hard task to count them when the Ce-sar wished to know how large a force of them was in this land he had fought for and won. And each Jew was to go to that part of the land where his fore-fa-thers dwelt, and have his name put down in the book at that place. So, as Jo-seph and his wife were of the house of Da-vid, they both set out for the town of Beth-le-hem, where Da-vid used to feed his sheep. The way was long, and when they came to the town they found a great crowd of folks there. There was no room for Jo-seph and Ma-ry at the inn, and they knew no one at whose house they could stay. As they went from place to place in search of a room, they came to a shed in which was a great trough or man-ger full of hay, where the poor folks who came to town fed the beasts on which they rode. So Jo-seph and Ma-ry made their home in this shed while they had to wait to have their names put down. And while they were there God gave to Ma-ry the son that he said she should have. And as she had no fine soft clothes to wrap the babe in, she took bands of cloth and put round him, and laid him on the straw in the man-ger.