Yet his
heart was heavy, for he knew what evil fate awaited him.
But, lo, as he passed through the gates of the city, the guards bowed
to him and the high officers of the city ran forth to meet him and
cried, "Thou art our lord for whom we have been waiting, and the son
of our king."
And the Star-Child wondered.
"I am no king's son, but the child of a beggar-woman and evil to look
at," he said. Then he saw his image in one of the burnished shields of
the guards.
Lo, his face was again beautiful, and all his comeliness had come back
to him again.
But he said to them, "I am not worthy, for I have denied my mother,
nor may I rest until I have found her. Let me go, for I must wander
again through the world." As he spoke he looked toward the road and
there he saw the beggar-woman who was his mother and at her side stood
the leper who had sat beside the gate.
Then a cry of joy broke from the Star-Child's lips and he ran over,
and kneeled down, and kissed the wounds in his mother's feet. And the
beggar-woman put her hand on his head and said to him, "Rise"; and the
leper put his hand upon the Star-Child also, and said to him, "Rise."
And he rose up from their feet and looked at them; and they were a
King and a Queen.
And the Queen said to him, "This is thy father whom thou hast fed.
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