The soft, mild autumn wind sighed across the plain, and at times a gust shook the canvas awning of the cart. The horses made their way slowly along the broad neglected road, beneath the leafless dripping trees, and past mist-enshrouded pools and poor villages, which looked doubly miserable on this miserable day. In many places the road was axle-deep in mud, so that the cart stuck fast. Simon and the three women had to dismount and push, in order to get it under way again. Miriam was certainly the weakest of the party, but she worked the hardest. She only roused herself at these times. Generally she sat with closed eyes, as if asleep. She went through terrible suffering. Her eyes were shut, but vivid pictures were continually before them. She thought she saw her child stretching out her little arms toward her. Some one seemed to bend over the little girl. Was it the gravedigger's wife? No, it was not she, it was a white-robed figure, with a pale bloodless countenance, like the Angel of Death.... Another moment she imagined she was in the presence of the great rabbi of Sadagora. He looked stern and hard, but she entreated him earnestly, as only a mother can entreat, for the life of her child, and he drove her away with cruel words. She thought she came back and found her child dead!... And again she pictured to herself that he received her kindly, saying, "Your child shall live," and she came home and found Lea dead ... dead!... It was frightful!... The mild autumn wind still blew across the heath; but was it only the plaintive sound of the wind that reached her ears? When it blew a little stronger she thought it sounded like Lea's voice, crying, "Mother!... Mother!..." "Did you hear anything?" cried Miriam wildly, seizing the hand of the woman nearest her.... At about two o'clock in the afternoon the cart stopped at a large, lonely tavern by the roadside, between Thuste and Zalesczyki. The horses were to rest here before proceeding farther. A well-appointed traveling carriage, out of which the horses had been taken, stood at the door, bespattered with mud as though from a long journey. "Miriam, we are to stop here for two hours," said the carrier. The women added compassionately, "Come, Miriam, get out. You will be ill if you don't eat some warm food." Miriam got out of the cart and followed them into the large public room. "I must not let myself become ill," she murmured half aloud.