"Will you lend it for a silver piece and much honour?
It can easily be back by noon." To which the little old man replied: "It stands to reason that we can make something out of it during this time of visitors.

Let us make it two silver pieces." "One silver piece and honour!" "Let us make it two silver pieces without honour," haggled the little old man.

"A steed for princes, I tell you.

In the whole of Judaea you won't find such another beauty! It is of noble descent, you must know." "We can dispense with that honour," said James, "if only it does not stumble." Then the old man related how in the year of Herod's massacre of the innocents--"a little over thirty years ago, I think--you must know that the Infant Messiah lay in a stable at Bethlehem with the ox and the ass.

The child rode away into foreign lands, as far as Egypt, they say, on that very ass.