typical Hypatia and Cyril,
losing hold of their respective seaweeds by the jerk, tumbled down, each
with its half-fish, and vanished head over heels into the blue depths in
so undignified a manner, that Philammon burst into a shout of laughter.

'What's the joke?' asked a well-known voice behind him; and a hand
patted him familiarly on the back. He looked round, and saw the little
porter, his head crowned with a full basket of figs, grapes, and
water-melons, on which the poor youth cast a longing eye. 'Well, my
young friend, and why are you not at church? Look at all the saints
pouring into the Caesareum there, behind you.'

Philammon answered sulkily enough something inarticulate.

'Ho, ho! Quarrelled with the successor of the Apostles already? Has my
prophecy come true, and the strong meat of pious riot and plunder proved
too highly spiced for your young palate? Eh?'

Poor Philammon! Angry with himself for feeling that the porter was
right; shrinking from the notion of exposing the failings of his
fellow-Christians; shrinking still more from making such a jackanapes
his confidant: and yet yearning in his loneliness to open his heart to
some one, he dropped out, hint by hint, word by word, the events of the
past evening, and finished by a request to be put in the way of earning
his breakfast.

'Earning your breakfast! Shall the favourite of the gods--shall the
guest of Hypatia--earn his breakfast, while I have an obol to share
with him? Base thought! Youth! I have wronged you. Unphilosophically I
allowed, yesterday morning, envy to ruffle the ocean of my intellect. We
are now friends and brothers, in hatred to the monastic tribe.'

'I do not hate them, I tell you,' said Philammon. 'But these Nitrian
savages--'

'Are the perfect examples of monkery, and you hate them; and therefore,
all greaters containing the less, you hate all less monastic monks--I
have not heard logic lectures in vain. Now, up! The sea woos our dusty
limbs: Nereids and Tritons, charging no cruel coin, call us to Nature's
baths. At home a mighty sheat-fish smokes upon the festive board; beer
crowns the horn, and onions deck the dish; come then, my guest and
brother!'

Philammon swallowed certain scruples about becoming the guest of a
heathen, seeing that otherwise there seemed no chance of having anything
else to swallow; and after a refreshing plunge in the sea, followed the
hospitable little fellow to Hypatia's door, where he dropped his d