t--were I--at least in Alexandria--I
might advise from day to day.... I should certainly see my way
clearer.... And unforeseen chances might arise, too .... Pambo,
my friend, thinkest thou that it would be sinful to obey the Holy
Patriarch?'

'Aha!' said Pambo, laughing, 'and thou art he who was for fleeing into
the desert an hour agone! And now, when once thou smellest the battle
afar off, thou art pawing in the valley, like the old war-horse. Go, and
God be with thee! Thou wilt be none the worse for it. Thou art too old
to fall in love, too poor to buy a bishopric, and too righteous to have
one given thee.'

'Art thou in earnest?'

'What did I say to thee in the garden? Go, and see our son, and send me
news of him.'

'Ah! shame on my worldly-mindedness! I had forgotten all this time to
inquire for him. How is the youth, reverend sir?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'Philammon, our spiritual son, whom we sent down to you three months
ago,' said Pambo. 'Risen to honour he is, by this time, I doubt not?'

'He? He is gone!'

'Gone?'

'Ay, the wretch, with the curse of Judas on him. He had not been with us
three days before he beat me openly in the patriarch's court, cast off
the Christian faith, and fled away to the heathen woman, Hypatia, of
whom he is enamoured.'

The two old men looked at each other with blank and horror-stricken
faces.

'Enamoured of Hypatia?' said Arsenius at last.

'It is impossible!' sobbed Pambo. 'The boy must have been treated
harshly, unjustly? Some one has wronged him, and he was accustomed
only to kindness, and could not bear it. Cruel men that you are, and
unfaithful stewards. The Lord will require the child's blood at your
hands!'

'Ay,' said Peter, rising fiercely, that is the world's justice! Blame
me, blame the patriarch, blame any and every one but the sinner. As if
a hot head and a hotter heart were not enough to explain it all! As if a
young fool had never before been bewitched by a fair face!'

'Oh, my friends, my friends,' cried Arsenius, 'why revile each other
without cause? I, I only am to blame. I advised you, Pambo!--I sent
him--I ought to have known--what was I doing, old worldling that I am,
to thrust the poor innocent forth into the temptations of Babylon? This
comes of all my schemings and my plottings! And now his blood will be on
my head-as if I bad not sins enough to bear already, I must go and add
this over and above all, to sell my own Joseph, the son of my ol