An hour later a carriage stopped at the door. It brought the private physician from the castle. He examined the child, felt her pulse, and then covered her carefully again; after which he desired the women to give him an account of the illness from beginning to end. "She has been in great danger," he said, when they had concluded, "but that is over now. It was most fortunate that you were aware of the necessity of keeping her warm when perspiration began." Miriam's eyes glistened. "And if we had not been so?" she asked. The doctor looked at her with surprise. "What a strange question!..." he said. "Answer me, I entreat!" she cried. "Well," he replied, hastily, "the child would certainly, or rather, would probably, have died." "God be praised!" cried Miriam, adding, as she turned proudly to her companion, "Now will you say that God has cursed me, when He has worked such a miracle for me? It _was_ a miracle that the kind gentlefolks arrived at the tavern at the same time as I--it _was_ a miracle, for otherwise my child would have died!" The child recovered. And what did the people of Barnow say? The conviction that a mother's love is strong enough to conquer ill-will, and bring healing and salvation, would not have made them cease their rancor toward the widow and her child; but this, in their eyes, was a visible miracle wrought by God, and such a miracle was of course more powerful than even a decree of the wonder-working rabbi. ESTERKA REGINA. (1872.) Esterka Regina!... That was what we school-boys used to call her when we returned home for the midsummer holidays from the gymnasium at Taropol, or from that at Czernowitz; and later on, when we were students at the University of Vienna, we called her by the same name whenever we talked of the girls at Barnow during any of our meetings with each other. Her real name was Rachel Welt, and afterward, when she married lanky Chaim, the cattle-dealer, Rachel Pinkus. She was a poor girl who lived in the Jewish quarter in Barnow. She lived in the small dwelling close to the Jewish slaughter-house, and her father, Hirsch Welt, was a butcher. He was a big burly man, and was disliked because of his rough ways. But that did not prevent us admiring her from a distance, and the Christian _elegants_ of Barnow did the same with less reserve than we. The unmarried members of the provincial court, instead of walking in the Graf's garden during their leisure hours--a place where they would have enjoyed plenty of fresh air and the perfume of flowers--chose rather to wander up and down the narrow street in front of the slaughter-house, where but little fresh air and no aromatic odors were to be found. Even the officers of the garrison never seemed to tire of watching Hirsch Welt as he used his butcher's knife in strict accordance with Talmudic law. One and all of these loungers were actuated by the desire to catch a glance from the bright eyes of Esterka Regina!...