d to him the spot where their
boats, drawn up on shore, lay hidden under sand and stones.

As soon as it was dusk, the anchorite in his boat went towards the place
of embarkation, and when the Blemmyes, in the darkness of midnight, drew
their first bark into the water, Hermas sailed off ahead of the enemy,
landed in much danger below the western declivity of the mountain, and
hastened up towards Sinai to warn the Pharanite watchmen on the beacon.

He gained the top of the difficult peak before sunrise, roused the lazy
sentinels who had left their posts, and before they were able to mount
guard, to hoist the flags or to begin to sound the brazen cymbals, he had
hurried on down the valley to his father's cave.

Since his disappearance Miriam had incessantly hovered round Stephanus'
dwelling, and had fetched fresh water for the old man every morning, noon
and evening, even after a new nurse, who was clumsier and more peevish,
had taken Paulus' place. She lived on roots, and on the bread the sick
man gave her, and at night she lay down to sleep in a deep dry cleft of
the rock that she had long known well. She quitted her hard bed before
daybreak to refill the old man's pitcher, and to chatter to him about
Hermas.

She was a willing servant to Stephanus because as often as she went to
him, she could hear his son's name from his lips, and he rejoiced at her
coming because she always gave him the opportunity of talking of Hermas.

For many weeks the sick man had been so accustomed to let himself be
waited on that he accepted the shepherdess's good offices as a matter of
course, and she never attempted to account to herself for her readiness
to serve him. Stephanus would have suffered in dispensing with her, and
to her, her visits to the well and her conversations with the old man had
become a need, nay a necessity, for she still was ignorant whether Hermas
was yet alive, or whether Phoebicius had killed him in consequence of her
betrayal. Perhaps all that Stephanus told her of his son's journey of
investigation was an invention of Paulus to spare the sick man, and
accustom him gradually to the loss of his child; and yet she was only too
willing to believe that Hermas still lived, and she quitted the
neighborhood of the cave as late as possible, and filled the sick man's
water-jar before the sun was up, only because she said to herself that
the fugitive on his return would seek no one else so soon as his father.

She had n