"What will the community say?" objected the carrier.
"They may say what they like," she answered—"I must go to my child!"
She seemed to lose her strength again after this effort, and the gentleman and his servant had almost to carry her to the carriage. They placed her beside the lady, and the forester took the opposite seat. Poor Miriam did not observe this, and did not thank him. "Drive as fast as the horses can go," he said to the coachman, and then she looked at him gratefully.
She sat silently beside her newly found friends, only now and then moving restlessly, as if the pace was too slow.
The horses went quickly, and it was still daylight when they reached Barnow. The people in the streets stared at the ill-assorted company in the carriage, and put their heads together as to what it could mean.
The lady blushed, but her husband shook his head, and said, "What does it matter to us?" When they passed the large figure of the Virgin which stands in a niche of the monastery wall, a sudden thought occurred to him, and he said softly to his wife: "She was called Miriam (Mary), and was a poor Jewish woman, and her heart was torn with grief for her child!"
It was dark when they stopped at the door of the little cottage by the graveyard.
Miriam sprang quickly out of the carriage. "May God reward you!" she breathlessly ejaculated.
"Have you a doctor?" asked the gentleman.
"No," she replied; "the doctor is away, passing the recruits."