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They had been working hard all day and the farmer had gotten a good supper of oats ready for them in their mangers, so that they could eat quickly and go to sleep, instead of staying awake and walking around to get their own suppers in the pasture. Out in the meadow the Sheep huddled close together under a low-branching tree, and stood still until the storm passed.
He came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best room, and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse ate warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on their haunches, upon bosses of straw.
It was of great size and beauty. By its side were two horse-stalls with racks and mangers, the bars of the rack were of gold bronze which was called findruiney, and the mangers of yellow brass. The floor was paved with cut marble, the walls lined with smooth boards of ash. There were no windows, but there were nine lamps in the room. "It will be thy duty to feed those lamps," said Concobar.
I thought I would have a sort of perpetual manger that should shake down the hay when it was wanted, and a self-acting machine that should cut up the turnips and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing for the cattle and horses to drink. With these simple arrangements I could lie in bed, and know that the "chores" were doing themselves.
The first speaker gazed into the fire thoughtfully, but at length said, like one possessed of a sudden resolve, "There is but one place in Bethlehem where there are mangers; but one, and that is in the cave near the old khan. Brethren, let us go see this thing which has come to pass. The priests and doctors have been a long time looking for the Christ.
The mow where the hay was stored was to the left, as you entered the door, and under that were the stalls where the horses munched their dinner and looked solemnly through the opening over the mangers at the two children engaged at play. Between where they sat and the rafters, the space was open. Maggie took her seat in the middle of the floor, and her brother placed himself opposite.
The best society were by common consent allowed to take the best seats very hard benches the less ambitious crowded behind, with minds fully made up not to allow themselves to be carried by enthusiasm beyond the expenditure of two sous when the plate went round; while favoured children, who were not expected to pay anything, because they had nothing, climbed into the mangers, and packed themselves as close together as aphids on a rose-stalk.
What few horse stalls had once occupied the building had been removed, and the mangers alone remained, with the odor of horse, to remind the guests of the original purpose of their ballroom.
One compartment became a gymnasium, another the carpenter's shop, the third, in which we were, remained a stable, though in these degenerate days no horse ever set foot inside it, its only use being to provide a place for the odd-job man to clean shoes. The mangers which had once held fodder were given over now to brushes and pots of polish.
For a moment at least, when he had heard them, he was unshakably sure. It was on an evening of the winter holidays, the Portuguese festival of Menin' Jesus. Christ was born again in a hundred mangers on a hundred tiny altars; there was cake and wine; songs went shouting by to the accompaniment of mandolins and tramping feet. The wind blew cold under a clear sky.
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