per for whoever hath power to think. Why
shouldst not a woman think if by so doing she can find answer to some
question that doth perplex her heart?"

"Thou dost ever make thy way seem right because of fair speech. But of
thy thinking what cometh? Here hast thou sat thinking by the couch of
him who lieth in the tomb. Hast thou thought anything that is of
service?"

"Whether it is of service I know not. But of my thinking doth it come
to me that it is not wisdom to seal the dead in tombs when the breath
hath scarce left the body. They carried our brother to the garden and
laid him on fresh earth as is done with things unclean. There did they
trim his beard and cut his nails and wrap him. And before the sun went
down he was put in the tomb behind a great stone that scarce a score of
men could roll aside."

"Much thinking and much grieving doth make thee foolish. Know you not
that the Jew wanteth not corruption in the house after the sunset?
Even the air were not enough to hold the evil spirits that would come
of it."

"The Jew hath strange ideas about evil spirits and greatly fears
something he knoweth not of. Thus doth fear early seal the dead in the
tomb--and perhaps they are not dead."

"Thou speakest strangely, as if thy trouble hath gone to thy head."

"Fear not for my head, Martha, since from thy lips did I hear the
strange tale that did give rise to my thinking. Didst thou not tell of
a kinsman of Joel who put his wife in a new tomb and sealed the door
with a great stone? And what was it that did leap into their arms
when, after three years, they rolled the stone away? Was it not the
bones of the woman who had been buried alive? And had she not stood
with her lips against the stone crying for help until she starved?
Aye, and she stood on, waiting for those to come who should learn from
her bones what her lips had prayed to tell. Didst thou not repeat me
this, my Martha, even to the screams of those into whose arms the
woman's bones did fall?"

"Thou sayest truly. But save this one, my ears have not heard so
gruesome a tale."

"What might happen once, might come to pass again. Who knoweth if
there might not be others--who knoweth?"

"Did not the physician say Lazarus is dead?"

"Yea, the physician."

"And the Rabbi?"

"Yea, the Rabbi."

"And did not the chief mourners whose business is ever with the dead,
speak him dead?"

"Yea, the chief mourners."

"Then why inviteth thou mis