maid, whose
attention had been directed to him, and who may have been laughing from
a distance at her neighbour's sally, was standing at the door of her
lodge, with two or three men; and, pointing him out to them as he came
forward, she said, "That is one of the Nazarene's followers."

Poor Peter! felled to the ground a second time by the touch of a
woman's hand. But how often has the saucy tongue and jeering laugh of
a woman made a man ashamed of the highest and holiest! Peter flung at
her an angry oath and, turning on his heel, went back again to the fire.

He was now completely panic-stricken, and lost all self-control. He
was boiling with conflicting emotions and could not keep quiet.
Assuming an air of defiance and indifference, he plunged into the
conversation, speaking loudly to throw off suspicion, but really
defeating his own object; for he drew attention on himself, and they
scanned him the more narrowly the more excited he became. A relative
of Malchus, whose ear he had cut off, recognised him. His loud country
voice and rough Galilean accent aroused the suspicions of others. To
bait such a pretender was a welcome diversion in the idle night, and
soon they were all in full cry after the quarry.

Peter was thoroughly lost; like a bull in the arena attacked and
stabbed on every side, he became blind with rage, terror and shame;
and, pouring out denials, he added to them oaths and curses hurled at
his adversaries.

The latter element was, no doubt, the resurrection of an old
fisherman's habit, long since dead and buried. Peter was just the man
likely to be a profane swearer in his youth--the headlong man of
temper, who likes to say a thing with as much emphasis and exaggeration
as possible. This is a sin whose power is generally broken instantly
at conversion. While there are sins which linger on for years and
require to be crucified by inches, profane swearing often dies an
instantaneous death. But even in this case it is difficult to get quit
of the evil past. In Peter this sin may have seemed to die at his
conversion; for years it had been dead and buried; yet, when the
favourable moment came, lo and behold, there it was again in vigorous
life. Old habits of sin are hard to kill. We seem to have killed and
buried them; but do you not sometimes hear a knocking beneath the
ground? do you not feel the dead thing turning in its coffin, and see
the earth moving above its grave? This is the penal