When she returned, Damaris rejoiced at the light in her face.
“Thou hast been among thy fountains!” she said with a smile.
“I have been among thy fountains,” Ethne replied. “I have had water given me to drink from the fountain of thy mother-tongue.”
Another day Ethne resolved to visit once more the farm among the hills, where she had seen the ruddy, happy children, the free, frank, soldierly man with the graceful, dark-eyed young wife, whose face seemed to her familiar, as a strain of music heard long ago. She found the young mother drawing water with a pitcher from the well near the house, her children laughing around her, and helping her to pour the water into a trough for the sheep which were clustering near. Her dark eyes brightened in kindly recognition, and all at once the likeness in her face flashed upon Ethne.
“Rachel!” she exclaimed, “Rachel at the well!”
“Rachel is my name,” the stranger said; “but how couldst thou know me?”
“I did not know thee,” Ethne said, “but I knew thy mother, Miriam, the wife of Eleazar.”
The young mother laid her pitcher on the brim of the well, and knelt down by its side, and clasping her hands in adoration, she looked up to heaven.
“God of our fathers—Father of our Christ,” she said, “Thou hast heard me at last.”
“He has heard thee all the time,” said Ethne, “thee, and thy father and mother, who have sought thee from land to land, and prayed for thee day and night.”