es and millet. The papyrus boat lies at the ferry; thou shalt
descend in it. The Lord will replace it for us when we need it. Speak
with no man on the river except the monks of God. When thou hast
gone five days' journey downward, ask for the mouth of the canal
of Alexandria. Once in the city, any monk will guide thee to the
archbishop. Send us news of thy welfare by some holy mouth. Come.'

Silently they paced together down the glen to the lonely beach of the
great stream. Pambo was there already, his white hair glittering in the
rising moon, as with slow and feeble arms he launched the light canoe.
Philammon flung himself at the old men's feet, and besought, with many
tears, their forgiveness and their blessing.'We have nothing to forgive.
Follow thou thine inward call. If it be of the flesh, it will avenge
itself; if it be of the Spirit, who are we that we should fight against
God? Farewell.' A few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were
lessening down the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight. Again a
minute, and the swift southern night had fallen, and all was dark but
the cold glare of the moon on the river, and on the rock-faces, and on
the two old men, as they knelt upon the beach, and with their heads upon
each other's shoulders, like two children, sobbed and prayed together
for the lost darling of their age.

CHAPTER II: THE DYING WORLD

In the upper story of a house in the Museum Street of Alexandria, built
and fitted up on the old Athenian model, was a small room. It had been
chosen by its occupant, not merely on account of its quiet; for though
it was tolerably out of hearing of the female slaves who worked, and
chattered, and quarrelled under the cloisters of the women's court on
the south side, yet it was exposed to the rattle of carriages and the
voices of passengers in the fashionable street below, and to strange
bursts of roaring, squealing, trumpeting from the Menagerie, a short way
off, on the opposite side of the street. The attraction of the situation
lay, perhaps, in the view which it commanded over the wall of the Museum
gardens, of flower-beds, shrubberies, fountains, statues, walks, and
alcoves, which had echoed for nearly seven hundred years to the wisdom
of the Alexandrian sages and poets. School after school, they had all
walked, and taught, and sung there, beneath the spreading planes and
chestnuts, figs and palm-trees. The place seemed fragrant with all
the riches of Gr