The rest quickly flocked to the spot, and Esther was lifted and found to breathe, though the Jew was stiff and cold. Some diluted spirit, from the cellar of Bags, being poured down her throat she revived a little, when my grandfather caused two of the men to bear her carefully to his house; and the body of the Jew being wrapt in a piece of canvass, was placed on a mule and conveyed to the hospital for interment. Medical aid restored Esther to consciousness, and she told how they came to be found in the cave. Her father, on leaving the hospital, had fled by chance, as she thought, to this cave, for he did not reach it by the usual path, but climbed, in his delirious fear, up the face of the rock, and she had followed him as well as she could, keeping his white figure in sight. They had both lain exhausted in the cave till morning, when, finding that her father slept, she was on the point of leaving him to seek assistance. But, unhappily, before she could quit the place, Bags and his associates entered from their plundering expedition into the town, and, frightened at their drunken language, and recognising in Bags the man who had robbed her, she had crept back to her concealment. The party of marauders never quitted the cavern from the moment of establishing themselves in it. They spent the day in eating, drinking, singing songs, and sometimes quarrelling. Twice, at night, she ventured forth; but she always found one of them asleep across the entrance, so that she could not pass without waking him, and once one of them started up, and seemed about to pursue her--doubtless Bags, on the occasion when he thought he saw a ghost. Nevertheless, she had mustered courage twice to take some fragments of food that were lying near the fire, leaving each time a piece of money in payment; and she had also taken a lighted candle, the better to ascertain her father's situation. He had never spoken to her since the first night of their coming, and, during all those dark and weary hours, (for they were three nights and two days in the cavern,) she had remained by him listening to his incoherent mutterings and moans. The candle had showed her that he had lost much blood, from the wound in his forehead breaking out afresh, as well as from the other received in the hospital, though the latter was but a flesh wound. These she had bandaged with shreds of her dress, and had tried to give him some of the nourishment she had procured, but could force nothing on him except some water. Some hours, however--how long she did not know, but it was during the night--before Owen's party found her, the Jew had become sensible. He told her he was dying; and, unconscious of where he was, desired her to fetch a light. This she had procured in the same way as before, lighting the candle at the embers of the fire round which Bags and his friends reposed. Then the Jew, who seemed to imagine himself still in the hospital, bid her say whom, among those she