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 and
not without some anxious excitement. "However strong your arm may be,
any novice could throw farther than you if only he knew the art of
holding the discus. It is not so--not so; it must cut through the air
like a knife with its sharp edge. Look how you hold your hand, you