Taurus, and Lyra strung her chords with fire. Hitty rested her weary
head against the window-frame and sent her wearier thoughts upward to
the stars; there were the points of light that the Chaldeans watched
upon their plains by night, and named with mystic syllables of their
weird Oriental tongue,--names that in her girlhood she had delighted to
learn, charmed by that nameless spell that language holds, wherewith it
plants itself ineradicably in the human mind, and binds it with fetters
of vague association that time and chance are all-powerless to
break,--Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgunebi, Bellatrix and Betelguese,
sonorous of Rome and Asia both, full of old echoes and the dry resonant
air of Eastern plains,--names wherein sounded the clash of Bellona's
armor, and the harsh stir of palm-boughs rustled by a hot wind of the
desert, and vibrant with the dying clangor of gongs, and shouts of
worshipping crowds reverberating through horrid temples of grinning and
ghastly idols, wet with children's blood.

Far, far away, the heavenly procession and their well-remembered names
had led poor Hitty's thoughts; worn out with anxiety, and faint for want
of the food she had forgotten to take, sleep crept upon her, and her
first consciousness of its presence was the awakening grasp of a rough
hand and the hoarse whisper of her husband.

"Get up!" said he. "Pick up your brat, get your shawl, and come!"

Hitty rose quickly to her feet. One faculty wretchedness gives, the
power of sudden self-possession,--and Hitty was broad awake in the very
instant she was called. Her husband stood beside her, holding a lantern;
her boy slept in the cradle at her feet.

"Have you seen your father?" said she, with quick instinct.