s of men and women sounded out through the open windows of the
church; then the door opened and the Pharanite Christians, who had been
partaking of the Supper--the bread and the cup passed from hand to
hand--came out into the moonlight. The elders and deacons, the readers
and singers, the acolytes and the assembled priesthood of the place
followed the Bishop Agapitus, and the laymen came behind Obedianus, the
head-man of the oasis, and the Senator Petrus; with Petrus came his wife,
his grown up children and numerous slaves.

The church was empty when the door-keeper, who was extinguishing the
lights, observed a man in a dark corner of an antechamber through which a
spring of water softly plashed and trickled, and which was intended for
penitents. The man was prostrate on the ground and absorbed in prayer,
and he did not raise himself till the porter called him, and threw the
light of his little lamp full in his face.

He began to address him with hard words, but when he recognized in the
belated worshipper the anchorite Paulus of Alexandria he changed his key,
and said, in a soft and almost submissive tone of entreaty, "You have
surely prayed enough, pious man. The congregation have left the church,
and I must close it on account of our beautiful new vessels and the
heathen robbers. I know that the brethren of Raithu have chosen you to be
their elder, and that his high honor was announced to you by their
messengers, for they came to see our church too and greatly admired it.
Are you going at once to settle with them or shall you keep the
high-feast with us?"

"That you shall hear to-morrow," answered Paulus, who had risen from his
knees, and was leaning against a pillar of the narrow, bare, penitential
chamber. "In this house dwells One of whom I would fain take counsel, and
I beg of you to leave me here alone. If you will, you can lock the door,
and fetch me out later, before you go to rest for the night."

"That cannot be," said the man considering, "for my wife is ill, and my
house is a long way from here at the end of the town by the little gate,
and I must take the key this very evening to the Senator Petrus, because
his son, the architect Antonius, wants to begin the building of the new
altar the first thing to-morrow morning. The workmen are to be here by
sunrise, and if--"

"Show me the key," interrupted Paulus. "To what untold blessing may this
little instrument close or open the issues! Do you know, man, t