"And leave her alone, when she is ill?" cried Miriam.
"I will do all I can for her," said the old woman; and the gravedigger's wife added, "I will nurse her as if she were my own child."
"Must I go?" cried the unhappy mother.
"You must," answered the old woman decidedly; but she added more gently, "at least it seems that you ought to go, but God alone knows what is right. Ah, Miriam, you do not know how much I have thought and suffered for you and your child! For eighty years of my life, I have never lost my faith in God and in His prophets, and now I begin to doubt!"
Then she collected herself, and said in a tone of command: "Miriam, you must go to the rabbi. Tomorrow morning early, Simon the carrier is going to start for Czernowitz, with two women. He will take you as far as Sadagóra. I will engage your seat for you in the cart; and here is money for going and returning. In three days you can be home again, and I am convinced you will find Lea getting better. Will you go, Miriam? It concerns the whole town—but that is nothing to you—it concerns your child that you should go."
The poor woman had a hard struggle. Her old belief in God had been without avail, for the child was growing weaker. As a drowning man catches at a straw, she determined to beseech forbearance from the man whom she had cursed.
"I will go," she said, with a sort of agony.
And she did go.
Next morning she started with Simon and the two women, passing out of the town, and along the highroad which leads southward into Bukowina. What she suffered in taking leave of her child shall not be here described; there is enough that is sad in my story.