Hitherto men alone had been given nameless graves, because they alone commit crimes, whether real or imaginary. The Jewish woman is good and pious. It was the first woman's grave I had ever seen with a blank headstone. What had she done? I puzzled long in the calm sunny stillness of that autumn day. I made up one story after another, each more extraordinary than the preceding one, to account for it; but again I was to learn that truth is often stranger than fiction. As I sat thinking on the grave, looking from me, and hardly seeing the rainbow tints that the clouds of dancing insects took in the clear air whenever a ray of sunshine touched their wings, I suddenly heard the monotonous drawling sound of mournful voices, and looking up, saw two old men advancing toward me along the hedgerow. They were busied in the exercise of a pious rite that I had not seen for so long, that, now that I saw it again, it struck me as it would have struck a stranger. Each of the men was carrying a short yellow wooden stick in his right hand, and round each of the sticks a thread was wound closely and thickly, uniting them to each other; for one end of the thread was wound round one stick, and the other end was wound round the other stick. Whenever the men stood still, they held the two sticks close together, and sang their strange duet in mournful unison. Then one of them ceased singing, held his stick perpendicularly, and stood as though rooted to the spot; while the other walked on slowly and gravely by the side of the hedge, singing in high nasal tones, and unwinding the thread as he went, in such a manner as to keep it straight and tight. After having gone about thirty paces, he stood still and silent. The other, meanwhile, began to advance toward him, singing in his turn, and winding up the thread, so that the ball on the one stick grew larger and larger, while that on the other stick grew smaller. Thus there were alternately one duet and two solos. This is called "measuring the boundaries;" and although it is only done after this fashion in some of the Podolian cemeteries, it is yet done in some way or other wherever the Jews are to be found. On the anniversary of the day on which a near and dear relation has deceased, it is the custom to measure the borders of the burial-ground in which he rests with a thread, that is afterward used for some pious purpose, such as to form the wick of candles offered in sacrifice, or to sew a prayer-mantle. The custom is the outcome of a sad gloomy symbolism, but it would take up too much room were I to attempt to explain it. I watched the men for a time, and then went up to them, and asked whose was the grave that had interested me. They looked at me mistrustfully. "Why do you ask?" one of them at length answered, with hesitation. "Because I want to know." "And why do you want to know?" A direct answer would have been too long, so I made him an indirect and shorter reply.