As she stepped out into the street her eye was caught by a startling object. Hanging by a rope from a hook fixed into an adjacent wall was a shriveled and mummified corpse, that of a man, who, doubtless unable longer to endure the agonies of slow starvation, had chosen to hasten his end by suicide. The thought that before her journey’s end she was likely to see other sights like this, or even more ghastly, almost drove her within the house again, but her mother’s wrath and Arad’s hunger spurred her on, and she walked away as quickly as her weakness would let her. A few paces, and she saw lying within the entrance of a narrow archway the body of a woman but recently dead, a woman with a frame emaciated by famine, the skin tightly drawn over her bones, the veins on her shriveled neck showing like sinews. Pillowed upon her arm lay an infant whose hand convulsively grasped his mother’s withered breast, twisting it with his fingers, and uttering feeble little cries of anger at finding himself deprived of sustenance. Pity for the mother, a greater pity for the babe, put Vashti in a state of hesitation. To leave the infant dying there was an unnatural act; on the other hand, where was the good in taking it to her own home? Neither she nor her mother had the means of preserving its life. It might as well die under the open sky as under a roof; and so, steeling her heart, Vashti went slowly on. But she got no further than the end of the street; beginning to feel like a murderess, she turned back, only to find the infant breathing its last. Leaving mother and babe Vashti went on her way, seeing with a pitying heart other sights equally grim. The Apocalypse, but recently written, had not yet come to her knowledge, or she might have recalled the passage, “_Their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city._” She entered a silent square, seemingly empty, but a second glance around showed her on its southern side a group of human figures--perhaps twenty in all--men, women, and children, clustered in various attitudes upon the steps of the Royal Synagogue. They took no notice of her approach, though her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the strange stillness. Vashti stopped short, absolutely appalled at their aspect. Though terribly wasted herself, Vashti was plump compared with these figures. With limbs attenuated to those of a skeleton; with eyes deep sunken in their orbit; with cheek-bones projecting hideously; with complexions darkened by famine, they looked like weird beings from another world. More dreadful than all was the look of unspeakable anguish stamped upon their features; it was the look of men who would never smile more in this world. They had come to this spot because from it their beloved temple could be seen; and they would fain die with their glazing eyes fixed to the last upon the lofty golden pinnacles of the white marble shrine that stood out in all its loveliness against the calm blue sky of evening.