The boy of whom she had so constantly thought, and with all sweet promises such as mothers find their purest delight in, must, at meeting her, stand afar off.

If he held out his hands to her, and called "Mother, mother," for very love of him she must answer, "Unclean, unclean!" And this other child, before whom, in want of other covering, she was spreading her long tangled locks, bleached unnaturally white--ah! that she was she must continue, sole partner of her blasted remainder of life.

Yet, O reader, the brave woman accepted the lot, and took up the cry which had been its sign immemorially, and which thenceforward was to be her salutation without change--"Unclean, unclean!" The tribune heard it with a tremor, but kept his place.
"Who are you ?" he asked.
"Two women dying of hunger and thirst.

Yet"-- the mother did not falter--"come not near us, nor touch the floor or the wall.

Unclean, unclean!" "Give me thy story, woman--thy name, and when thou wert put here, and by whom, and for what." "There was once in this city of Jerusalem a Prince Ben-Hur, the friend of all generous Romans, and who had Caesar for his friend.
I am his widow, and this one with me is his child.