rers lent it new interest, and the wit of the
improviser drew forth sighs of interest and shouts of laughter.

A yellow-haired girl on the edge of the throng turned, as Hermas
passed, and smiled in his face. She put out her hand and caught him
by the sleeve.

"Stay," she said, "and laugh a bit with us. I know who you are--the
son of Demetrius. You must have bags of gold. Why do you look so
black? Love is alive yet."

Hermas shook off her hand, but not ungently.

"I don't know what you mean," he said. "You are mistaken in me. I am
poorer than you are."

But as he passed on, he felt the warm touch of her fingers through
the cloth on his arm. It seemed as if she had plucked him by the
heart.

He went out by the Western Gate, under the golden cherubim that the
Emperor Titus had stolen from the ruined Temple of Jerusalem and
fixed upon the arch of triumph. He turned to the left, and climbed
the hill to the road that led to the Grove of Daphne.

In all the world there was no other highway as beautiful. It wound
for five miles along the foot of the mountains, among gardens and
villas, plantations of myrtles and mulberries, with wide outlooks
over the valley of Orontes and the distant, shimmering sea.

The richest of all the dwellings was the House of the Golden
Pillars, the mansion of Demetrius. He had won the favor of the
apostate Emperor Julian, whose vain efforts to restore the worship
of the heathen gods, some twenty years ago, had opened an easy way
to wealth and power for all who would mock and oppose Christianity.
Demetrius was not a sincere fanatic like his royal master; but he
was bitter enough in his professed scorn of the new religion, to
make him a favourite at the court where the old religion was in
fashion. He had reaped a rich reward of his policy, and a strange
sense of consistency made him more fiercely loyal to it than if it
had been a real faith. He was proud of being called "the friend of
Julian"; and when his son joined himself to the Christians, and
acknowledged the unseen God, it seemed like an insult to his
father's success. He drove the boy from his door and disinherited
him.

The glittering portico of the serene, haughty house, the repose of
the well-ordered garden, still blooming with belated flowers, seemed
at once to deride and to invite the young outcast plodding along the
dusty road. "This is your birthright," whispered the clambering
rose-trees by the gate; and the closed portals of