ldier's son to our peaceful handicraft, but he shall not remain on the
mountain among these queer sluggards, for there he is being ruined, and
yet he is not of a common sort."

When he had given a few orders to the overseer of his workmen, he
followed the young man to see his suffering father.

It was now some hours since Hermas and Paulus had left the wounded
anchorite, and he still lay alone in his cave. The sun, as it rose higher
and higher, blazed down upon the rocks, which began to radiate their
heat, and the hermit's dwelling was suffocatingly hot. The pain of the
poor man's wound increased, his fever was greater, and he was very
thirsty. There stood the jug, which Paulus had given him, but it was long
since empty, and neither Paulus nor Hermas had come back. He listened
anxiously to the sounds in the distance, and fancied at first that he
heard the Alexandrian's footstep, and then that he heard loud words and
suppressed groans coming from his cave. Stephanus tried to call out, but
he himself could hardly hear the feeble sound, which, with his wounded
breast and parched mouth, he succeeded in uttering. Then he fain would
have prayed, but fearful mental anguish disturbed his devotion. All the
horrors of desertion came upon him, and he who had lived a life
overflowing with action and enjoyment, with disenchantment and satiety,
who now in solitude carried on an incessant spiritual struggle for the
highest goal--this man felt himself as disconsolate and lonely as a
bewildered child that has lost its mother.

He lay on his bed of pain softly crying, and when he observed by the
shadow of the rock that the sun had passed its noonday height,
indignation and bitter feeling were added to pain, thirst and weariness.
He doubled his fists and muttered words which sounded like soldier's
oaths, and with them the name now of Paulus, now of his son. At last
anguish gained the upperhand of his anger, and it seemed to him, as
though he were living over again the most miserable hour of his life, an
hour now long since past and gone.

He thought he was returning from a noisy banquet in the palace of the
Caesars. His slaves had taken the garlands of roses and poplar leaves
from his brow and breast, and robed him in his night-dress; now, with a
silver lamp in his hand, he was approaching his bedroom, and he smiled,
for his young wife was awaiting him, the mother of his Hermas. She was
fair and he loved her well, and he had brought ho