"I am sure this is the well where mother raised water for the cattle," answered the girl.
"Here are two small crosses under the birch. I wonder what that means," said the boy.
"I am afraid to go in," said the girl. "What if Father and Mother are not living, or think if they don't know us. You go in first, brother."
In the sitting-room sat an old man and his wife—well, they were really not old, but suffering and sorrow had aged them before their time. The man said to his wife, "Now spring has come again, birds are singing, flowers are peeping up everywhere, but there is no new hope of joy in our hearts. We have lost all our children, two are resting under the birch, and far sadder—two are in the land of the enemy, and we shall never see them on earth. It is hard to be alone when one grows old."
The wife answered, "I have not given up hope. God is mighty, he led the people of Israel out of their imprisonment. If he so wills he has the power to give us back our children."
"Oh, what a blessing that would be," answered the man.
While he was still talking, the door opened. In stepped a boy and a girl who asked for something to eat. "Come nearer children," said the man, "stay with us tonight." And to each other the old people said, "Our children would have been just their ages if we had been allowed to keep them, and they would have been just as beautiful," thought the parents, and they wept.
Then the children could keep still no longer, but embraced their father and mother, crying, "We are your children whom God in a wonderful way has led back from the foreign land."
