Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/323

came up men who were carrying a boy. For this boy had gone to the mountain, with others of his age, to seek for wood; and when he had found there a partridge's nest, and put out his hand to take the eggs from it, a poisonous serpent from the middle of the nest wounded him, so that he cried out for help. When his companions came near in haste, they found him lying on the ground like one dead, and then his relatives came and lifted him up to carry him into the town. But when they had come to the place in which the Lord Jesus was sitting as the king, and the other boys standing round as his attendants, the boys went in haste to meet him who was bitten by the serpent, and said to his friends, Come and salute the king. But when they would not come, because of the sorrow in which they were, the boys took them by force against their will. And when they had come to the Lord Jesus, he asked them why they were carrying this boy. And when they replied that a serpent had bitten him, the Lord Jesus said to the boys, Let us go and kill the serpent. And when the parents of the boy asked that they would let them depart, for their son was at the point of death, the boys answered and said, Have ye not heard what the king hath said: Let us go and kill the serpent? And will ye not obey him? And so against their will they took the litter back. And when they had come to the nest, the Lord Jesus said, Is this the serpent's place? And