r apart, and, resting her bare feet against the
wall, she raised herself to look in.

She saw Sirona sitting up upon her couch, and opposite to her the Gaul
with pale distorted features; at his feet lay the sheepskin; in his right
hand he held the lamp, and its light fell on the paved floor in front of
the bed, and was reflected in a large dark red pool.

"That is blood," thought she, and she shuddered and closed her eyes.

When she reopened them she saw Sirona's face with crimson cheeks, turned
towards her husband; she was unhurt--but Hermas?

"'That is his blood!" she thought with anguish, and a voice seemed to
scream in her very heart, "I, his murderess, have shed it."

Her hands lost their hold of the shutters, her feet touched the pavement
of the yard, and, driven by her bitter anguish of soul, she fled out by
the way she had come--out into the open and up to the mountain. She felt
that rather would she defy the prowling panthers, the night-chill, hunger
and thirst, than appear again before Dame Dorothea, the senator, and
Marthana, with this guilt on her soul; and the flying Miriam was one of
the goblin forms that had terrified Paulus.

The patient anchorite sat down again on the stone seat. "The frost is
really cruel," thought he, "and a very good thing is such a woolly
sheepskin; but the Saviour endured far other sufferings than these, and
for what did I quit the world but to imitate Him, and to endure to the
end here that I may win the joys of the other world. There, where angels
soar, man will need no wretched ram's fell, and this time certainly
selfishness has been far from me, for I really and truly suffer for
another--I am freezing for Hermas, and to spare the old man pain. I would
it were even colder! Nay, I will never, absolutely never again lay a
sheepskin over my shoulders."

Paulus nodded his head as if to signify assent to his own resolve; but
presently he looked graver, for again it seemed to him that he was
walking in a wrong path.

"Aye! Man achieves a handful of good, and forthwith his heart swells with
a camel-load of pride. What though my teeth are chattering, I am none the
less a most miserable creature. How it tickled my vanity, in spite of all
my meditations and scruples, when they came from Raithu and offered me
the office of elder; I felt more triumphant the first time I won with the
quadriga, but I was scarcely more puffed up with pride then, than I was
yesterday. How many who think