. Year after year I have
watched them coming nearer and ever nearer in their course like the
whirling sand-storms of the desert, which sweep past the caravan, and
past again, and yet overwhelm it after all--that black flood of the
northern barbarians. I foretold it; I prayed against it; but, like
Cassandra's of old, my prophecy and my prayers were alike unheard.
My pupil spurned my warnings. The lusts of youth, the intrigues of
courtiers, were stronger than the warning voice of God; then I ceased
to hope; I ceased to pray for the glorious city, for I knew that her
sentence was gone forth; I saw her in the spirit, even as St. John saw
her in the Revelations; her, and her sins, and her ruin. And I fled
secretly at night, and buried myself here in the desert, to await the
end of the world. Night and day I pray the Lord to accomplish His elect,
and to hasten His kingdom. Morning by morning I look up trembling, and
yet in hope, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven, when the sun
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and the stars
shall fall from heaven, and the skies pass away like a scroll, and the
fountains of the nether fire burst up around our feet, and the end of
all shall come. And thou wouldst go into the world from which I fled?'

'If the harvest be at hand, the Lord needs labourers. If the times be
awful, I should be doing awful things in them. Send me, and let that
day find me, where I long to be, in the forefront of the battle of the
Lord.'

'The Lord's voice be obeyed! Thou shalt go. Here are letters to Cyril
the patriarch. He will love thee for my sake: and for thine own sake,
too, I trust. Thou goest of our free will as well as thine own. The
abbot and I have watched thee long, knowing that the Lord bad need of
such as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to see by thy readiness
to obey, whether thou wert fit to rule. Go, and God be with thee. Covet
no man's gold or silver. Neither eat flesh nor drink wine, but live as
thou hast lived--a Nazarite of the Lord. Fear not the face of man; but
look not on the face of woman. In an evil hour came they into the world,
the mothers of all mischiefs which I have seen under the sun. Come; the
abbot waits for us at the gate.'

With tears of surprise, joy, sorrow, almost of dread, Philammon hung
back.

'Nay--come. Why shouldst thou break thy brethren's hearts and ours by
many leave-takings! Bring from the storehouse a week's provision of
dried dat