f Heaven. I had been Menander, and like unto Saul, I became Paulus. All
that Menander loved--baths, feasts, theatres, horses and chariots, games
in the arena, anointed limbs, roses and garlands, purple-garments, wine
and the love of women--lie behind me like some foul bog out of which a
traveller has struggled with difficulty. Not a vein of the old man
survives in the new, and a new life has begun for me, mid-way to the
grave; nor for me only, but for all pious men. For you too the hour will
sound, in which you will die to--"

"If only I, like you, had been a Menander," cried Hermas, sharply
interrupting the speaker: "How is it possible to cast away that which I
never possessed? In order to die one first must live. This wretched life
seems to me contemptible, and I am weary of running after you like a calf
after a cow. I am free-born, and of noble race, my father himself has
told me so, and I am certainly no feebler in body than the citizens' sons
in the town with whom I went from the baths to the wrestling-school."

"Did you go to the Palaestra?" asked Paulus in surprise.

"To the wrestling-school of Timagetus," cried Hermas, coloring. "From
outside the gate I watched the games of the youths as they wrestled, and
threw heavy disks at a mark. My eyes almost sprang out of my head at the
sight, and I could have cried out aloud with envy and vexation, at having
to stand there in my ragged sheep-skin excluded from all competition. If
Pachomius had not just then come up, by the Lord I must have sprung into
the arena, and have challenged the strongest of them all to wrestle with
me, and I could have thrown the disk much farther than the scented puppy
who won the victory and was crowned."

"You may thank, Pachomius," said Paulus laughing, "for having hindered
you, for you would have earned nothing in the arena but mockery and
disgrace. You are strong enough, certainly, but the art of the discobolus
must be learned like any other. Hercules himself would be beaten at that
game without practice, and if he did not know the right way to handle the
disk."

"It would not have been the first time I had thrown one," cried the boy.
"See, what I can do!" With these words he stooped and raised one of the
flat stones, which lay piled up to secure the pathway; extending his arm
with all his strength, he flung the granite disk over the precipice away
into the abyss.

"There, you see," cried Paulus, who had watched the throw carefully an