"How should we know?" they at length answered, with hesitation.
"She is gone! Oh, help me, help me!" the mother cried in desperation, as she turned and hurried out into the dark burial-ground.
The gravedigger's wife searched the highroad which leads toward the town, while the man followed Miriam.
He distinguished her dark figure amongst the mounds and headstones, but he was unable to over-take her. She was running wildly over every obstacle, now stepping on a gravestone, and again stumbling over the root of a tree, calling her child loudly as she ran. The man knew the place well, and its terrors had become commonplace in his eyes; but still his hair stood on end with fear, as he ran in the dark over the graves, and the mother's despairing cry fell on his ears.
They both neared the spot where the burial-ground is bounded by the deep, sluggish river Lered. "The fence is broken," muttered the man, and he tried not to follow up the thought that had occurred to him.
But fate had been merciful.
As they hastened along by the side of the fence, and Miriam, with an almost failing voice, called her child, suddenly, from behind a gravestone, a thin trembling voice answered—"Mother!"
The little girl had run about the whole day. When the dusk had surprised her in this distant place, she had sat down and fallen asleep.
The child only half comprehended why her mother seized her hastily in her arms, and pressed her to her breast, covering her little face with a thousand kisses and tears.
Slowly Miriam carried her home, the gravedigger following and rejoicing, while he shook his head, and murmured: "It wouldn't have surprised me had we found the child dead. Not at all! The Great Death is coming near us again. They say that it has already reached the Turks!..."