ilight is short in the neighborhood of the tropics, and
she knew that she would be overtaken by the darkness on the stony and
fissured road down the valley if she lingered any longer. She feared the
terrors of the night, the spirits and demons, and a thousand vague
dangers whose nature she could not have explained even to herself; and
yet she did not stir from the spot nor cease listening and waiting for
his return till the sun had disappeared behind the sacred mountain, and
the glow in the west had paled.

All around was as still as death, she could hear herself breathe, and as
the evening chill fell she shuddered with cold.

She now heard a loud noise above her head. A flock of wild mountain
goats, accustomed to come at this hour to quench their thirst at the
spring, came nearer and nearer, but drew back as they detected the
presence of a human being. Only the leader of the herd remained standing
on the brink of the ravine, and she knew that he was only awaiting her
departure to lead the others down to drink. Following a kindly impulse,
she was on the point of leaving to make way for the animals, when she
suddenly recollected Hermas's threat to drive her from the well, and she
angrily picked up a stone and flung it at the buck, which started and
hastily fled. The whole herd followed him. Miriam listened to them as
they scampered away, and then, with her head sunk, she led her flock
home, feeling her way in the darkness with her bare feet.

CHAPTER II.

High above the ravine where the spring was lay a level plateau of
moderate extent, and behind it rose a fissured cliff of bare, red-brown
porphyry. A vein of diorite of iron-hardness lay at its foot like a green
ribbon, and below this there opened a small round cavern, hollowed and
arched by the cunning hand of nature. In former times wild beasts,
panthers or wolves, had made it their home; it now served as a dwelling
for young Hermas and his father.

Many similar caves were to be found in the holy Fountain, and other
anchorites had taken possession of the larger ones among them.

That of Stephanus was exceptionally high and deep, and yet the space was
but small which divided the two beds of dried mountain herbs where, on
one, slept the father, and on the other, the son.

It was long past midnight, but neither the younger nor the elder
cave-dweller seemed to be sleeping. Hermas groaned aloud and threw
himself vehemently from one side to the other without an