Some time after the incident described above a serious trouble came upon Azariah. Miriam, his elder daughter, when she returned one day from her usual task of gathering herbs to eke out the family meal, complained of headache. It was evident that she was suffering from sunstroke. As the spring advanced the heat in some of the narrow mountain valleys became exceedingly oppressive, and the town-bred child felt it acutely. For some days her life was in danger, all the greater because she had neither medical attendance nor skilful nursing. Ruth did all she could for the little sufferer, but then Ruth had her own husband to attend to, for, though recovering from his wound, he needed much care, and her child was still too young to be left alone. One or two visits in the day was all that she could give. For the most part the girl’s father was her nurse, the little Judith giving such help as she could. Love gave a lightness and tenderness to his touch, and supplied the place of skill in that marvellous way which is so often possible to love. Day after day, as he sat by the bedside, and watched his charge, the girl’s face, now pale and wasted, and aged as it was with suffering, reminded him more and more of his lost Hannah. He lived over the happy past that they had known before the evil days began, the time when their first acquaintance as youth and maiden had ripened into love, and the early years of their wedded life. Thus he began to live in a world of imagination, while the sordid circumstances of the present seemed to make no impression upon him, though he always retained a punctual recollection of the duties that belonged to his attendance upon the sick. One day Ruth had come in to pay the daily visit for which, however engrossing her own occupations, she always contrived to find an opportunity. The patient was in a sound sleep, with the little Judith for her sole attendant, Azariah having received an urgent summons to attend a council of war, in which some subject with which he was especially acquainted was to be discussed. After a few minutes Azariah returned, but without any of the signs of agitation or haste that might be expected from one hurrying back to the performance of a duty that he had been compelled to neglect. His sister wondered to see him so calm, and she was still more surprised when he went on to say— “How like the child is growing to my dear Hannah!” Ruth had often thought the same, but had not ventured to say so, for Azariah had never mentioned his dead wife. “Yes,” she answered, “I have often thought so.” “I have had some happy times of late. Before I could not get out of my mind the dreadful sight of her face when I last saw it.” He paused for a moment, overpowered by the recollection, but soon resumed in a cheerful voice: “But now in this dear child I seem to see her as she was in those happy Bethlehem days before our marriage, and again in the still happier time we had together in Jerusalem.”