There was one subject of thought, and that a distressing one, to which Zarah's mind most readily reverted when she would turn it from the channel into which it was ever naturally flowing. This was the mystery connected with the fate of Abner her father. The few words which had escaped Hadassah in an unguarded moment, were as the dull red light which a torch might throw on the sides of some yawning pit, whose depths are left in profound darkness. Often had Zarah yearned to know more of her father, how he had died, for she had once deemed him dead, where his dear remains had been laid,--all that concerned him was of deep interest to his only child. But any attempt to break through the reserve which sealed the lips of Hadassah had evidently occasioned such acute distress that Zarah had long since given up the hope of gaining information from her. Anna had entered the service of Hadassah, since the Hebrew lady had quitted Bethsura; the attendant knew nothing, and therefore could tell nothing, of what had previously occurred in the family. Solomona, when she had paid occasional visits to her kinswomen, had never given Zarah an opportunity of speaking on so delicate a subject. Once when Zarah had ventured to ask the question, "Did you know my father?" Solomona had appeared not to hear it, and had instantly started some quite irrelevant topic of conversation. Abishai doubtless knew much about the brother of his wife, but Zarah shrank from questioning him; from his fierce impetuosity of character, he was not one to draw out the confidence of a gentle and timid girl. Zarah almost felt as if her uncle disliked, and for some reason which she understood not, regarded her with mingled pity and contempt. Thus the daughter of Abner, cut off from all means of gaining reliable information, was thrown back on her own conjectures. A vague doubt which had lately arisen in Zarah's mind, but which had always heretofore been repelled as treason to a parent's memory, was given form and substance by the faint exclamation which grief had wrung from Hadassah, "_Must I know that misery twice._" Many slight circumstances then recurred to Zarah's memory to confirm her suspicions, especially the anguish which Hadassah had betrayed at the burial of Solomona, when a strange pang of envy had seemed to intensify that of bereavement. Zarah was as one bending lower and lower over that pit of which she longed, yet dreaded, to sound the depths, straining her eyes to penetrate the darkness, while trembling to think what horrors that darkness might hide.