By his side was a ladder placed against the window. As I
looked up I beheld the head of a corpse resting on its top. The victim
must have been lately slain, for her blood still dripped slowly down
into an empty wine-pot that stood within the soldier's reach. When I
saw the ladder, hope revived within me. I removed it to the wall--I
mounted, and laid my dead child on the great stones at its top--I
returned, and placed my wounded boy by the corpse. Slowly, and with
many efforts, I dragged the ladder upwards, until from its own weight
one end fell to the ground on the other side. As I had risen so I
descended. In the sand of the river-bank I scraped a hole, and buried
there the corpse of the infant; for I could carry the weight of two no
longer. Then with my wounded child I reached some caverns that lay
onward near the seashore. There throughout the next day I lay hidden--
alone with my sufferings of body and my affliction of heart--until the
night came on, when I set forth on my journey to the mountains; for I
knew that at Aemona, in the camp of the warriors of my people, lay the
only refuge that was left to me on earth.
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