piece of canvass, was
placed on a mule and conveyed to the hospital for interment.

Medical aid restored Esther to consciousness, and she told how they came
to be found in the cave.

Her father, on leaving the hospital, had fled by chance, as she thought,
to this cave, for he did not reach it by the usual path, but climbed,
in his delirious fear, up the face of the rock, and she had followed him
as well as she could, keeping his white figure in sight. They had both
lain exhausted in the cave till morning, when, finding that her father
slept, she was on the point of leaving him to seek assistance. But,
unhappily, before she could quit the place, Bags and his associates
entered from their plundering expedition into the town, and, frightened
at their drunken language, and recognising in Bags the man who had
robbed her of her comb, she had crept back to her concealment. The party
of marauders never quitted the cavern from the moment of establishing
themselves in it. They spent the day in eating, drinking, singing songs,
and sometimes quarrelling. Twice, at night, she ventured forth; but she
always found one of them asleep across the entrance, so that she could
not pass without waking him, and once one of them started up, and seemed
about to pursue her--doubtless Bags, on the occasion when he thought he
saw a ghost. Nevertheless, she had mustered courage twice to take some
fragments of food that were lying near the fire, leaving each time a
piece of money in payment; and she had also taken a lighted candle, the
better to ascertain her father's situation. He had never spoken to her
since the first night of their coming, and, during all these dark and
weary hours (for they were three nights and two days in the cavern),
she had remained by him listening to his incoherent mutterings and
moans. The candle had showed her that he had lost much blood, from the
wound in his forehead breaking out afresh, as well as from the other
received in the hospital, though the latter was but a flesh wound. These
she had bandaged with shreds of her dress, and had tried to give him
some of the nourishment she had procured, but could force nothing on him
except some water. Some hours, however--how long she did not know, but
it was during the night--before Owen's party found her, the Jew had
become sensible. He told her he was dying; and, unconscious of where he
was, desired her to fetch a light. This she had procured in the same way
as before, lig