which in this life we see not the uses, has nevertheless its
definite object.... It may seem but a barren grief in the history of a
life, it may prove a fruitful joy in the history of a soul."

Hadassah's intense, undying affection for her unworthy son, led her to
regard with peculiar affection the child whom he had left to her care.
She loved Zarah both for his sake and her own. Zarah was the one
flower left in the desert over which the simoom had swept; her smile
was to the bereaved mother as the bright smile of hope. Hadassah, as
she watched the opening virtues of Abner's daughter, could not, would
not believe that the parent of Zarah could ever be finally lost. God
would surely hear a mother's prayers, and save Abner from the fate of
an apostate. All that Hadassah asked of Heaven was to see her son once
again in the path of duty, and then she would die happy. The love for
Abner which still lived in the widow's bosom, was like the unseen fires
that glow unseen beneath the surface of the earth, only known by the
warmth of the springs that gush up into light. Even as those springs
was the love of the widow for Abner's daughter.

[1] Dr. Kitto.

[2] Lord Lytton.

CHAPTER XXVI.

WEARY WANDERINGS.

Hadassah had believed years previously that she had suffered to the
extreme limits of human endurance--that there were no deeper depths of
misery to which she could descend; but the news brought on that fatal
night by Salathiel showed her that she had been mistaken. The idea of
her Zarah, her tender loving Zarah, in the hands of the Syrians,
brought almost intolerable woe. So carefully had the maiden been
nurtured, watched over, shielded from every wrong, like an unfledged
bird that has always been kept under the warm, soft, protecting wing,
that the utter defencelessness of her present position struck Hadassah
with terror.

And how--the widow could not help asking herself--how could one so
timid and sensitive stand the test of persecution from which the
boldest might shrink? Zarah would weep at a tale of suffering, turn
faint at the sight of blood. She was not any means courageous, and her
young cousins, Solomona's sons, had been wont to make mirth of her
terror when a centipede had once been found nestling under a cushion
near her. Could such a soft silken thread bear the strain of a blast
which might snap the strongest cable? Hadassah trembled for her
darling, and would willingly have consent