s attractions were wretchedly scant; beasts and birds
avoided the place as if they knew its history and present use;
every green thing perished in its first season; the winds warred
upon the shrubs and venturous grasses, leaving to drought such as
they could not uproot. Look where she would, the view was made
depressingly suggestive by tombs--tombs above her, tombs below,
tombs opposite her own tomb--all now freshly whitened in warning
to visiting pilgrims. In the sky--clear, fair, inviting--one would
think she might have found some relief to her ache of mind; but,
alas! in making the beautiful elsewhere the sun served her never so
unfriendly--it did but disclose her growing hideousness. But for the
sun she would not have been the horror she was to herself, nor been
waked so cruelly from dreams of Tirzah as she used to be. The gift
of seeing can be sometimes a dreadful curse.

Does one ask why she did not make an end to her sufferings?

THE LAW FORBADE HER!

A Gentile may smile at the answer; but so will not a son of Israel.

While she sat there peopling the dusky solitude with thoughts even
more cheerless, suddenly a woman came up the hill staggering and
spent with exertion.

The widow arose hastily, and covering her head, cried, in a voice
unnaturally harsh, "Unclean, unclean!"

In a moment, heedless of the notice, Amrah was at her feet. All the
long-pent love of the simple creature burst forth: with tears and
passionate exclamations she kissed her mistress's garments, and for
a while the latter strove to escape from her; then, seeing she
could not, she waited till the violence of the paroxysm was over.

"What have you done, Amrah?" she said. "Is it by such disobedience
you prove your love for us? Wicked woman! You are lost; and he--your
master--you can never, never go back to him."

Amrah grovelled sobbing in the dust.

"The ban of the Law is upon you, too; you cannot return to Jerusalem.
What will become of us? Who will bring us bread? O wicked, wicked Amrah!
We are all, all undone alike!"

"Mercy, mercy!" Amrah answered from the ground.

"You should have been merciful to yourself, and by so doing been
most merciful to us. Now where can we fly? There is no one to
help us. O false servant! The wrath of the Lord was already too
heavy upon us."

Here Tirzah, awakened by the noise, appeared at the door of the
tomb. The pen shrinks from the picture she presented. In the
half-clad apparition, patched with