“You shall learn that I am a man,” cried Hermas with sparkling eyes.  “My bow and arrows are lying in your cave, I will fetch them and then—­ aye! you shall see whether you sent the right man on the errand.  Greet my father, and once more give me your hand.”

Paulus grasped the boy’s right hand, drew him to him, and kissed his forehead with fatherly tenderness.  Then he said, “In my cave, under the green stone, you will find six gold-pieces; take three of them with you on your journey.  You will probably need them at any rate to pay your passage.  Now be off, and get to Raithu in good time.”

Hermas hurried up the mountain, his head full of the important task that had been laid upon him; dazzling visions of the great deeds he was to accomplish eclipsed the image of the fair Sirona, and he was so accustomed to believe in the superior insight and kindness of Paulus that he feared no longer for Sirona now that his friend had made her affair his own.

The Alexandrian looked after him, and breathed a short prayer for him; then he went down again into the valley.

It was long past midnight, and the moon was sinking; it grew cooler and cooler, and since he had given his sheepskin to Hermas he had nothing on, but his thread-bare coat.  Nevertheless he went slowly onwards, stopping every now and then, moving his arms, and speaking incoherent words in a low tone to himself.

He thought of Hermas and Sirona, of his own youth, and of how in Alexandria he himself had tapped at the shutters of the dark-haired Aso, and the fair Simaitha.

“A child—­a mere boy,” he murmured.  “Who would have thought it?  The Gaulish woman no doubt may be handsome, and as for him, it is a fact, that as he threw the discus I was myself surprised at his noble figure.  And his eyes—­aye, he has Magdalen’s eyes!  If the Gaul had found him with his wife, and had run his sword through his heart, he would have gone unpunished by the earthly judge—­however, his father is spared this sorrow.  In this desert the old man thought that his darling could not be touched by the world and its pleasures.  And now?  These brambles I once thought lay dried up on the earth, and could never get up to the top of the palm-tree where the dates ripen, but a bird flew by, and picked up the berries, and carried them into its nest at the highest point of the tree.

“Who can point out the road that another will take, and say to-day, ’To-morrow I shall find him thus and not otherwise.’

“We fools flee into the desert in order to forget the world, and the world pursues us and clings to our skirts.  Where are the shears that are keen enough to cut the shadow from beneath our feet?  What is the prayer that can effectually release us—­born of the flesh—­from the burden of the flesh?  My Redeemer, Thou Only One, who knowest it, teach it to me, the basest of the base.”

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