nt and in every
place I can find Him."

The two women knelt down side by side, and both besought the same God
for the same mercies--not for themselves, but for another; and both
in their sorrow could give thanks--Sirona, because in Dorothea she had
found a mother, and Dorothea, because in Sirona she had found a dear and
loving daughter.

CHAPTER XXII.

Paulus was sitting in front of the cave that had sheltered Polykarp and
Sirona, and he watched the torches whose light lessened as the bearers
went farther and farther towards the valley. They lighted the way for
the wounded sculptor, who was being borne home to the oasis, lying in
his mother's easy litter, and accompanied by his father and his sister.

"Yet an hour," thought the anchorite, "and the mother will have her son
again, yet a week and Polykarp will rise from his bed, yet a year and he
will remember nothing of yesterday but a scar--and perhaps a kiss that
he pressed on the Gaulish woman's rosy lips. I shall find it harder to
forget. The ladder which for so many years I had labored to construct,
on which I thought to scale heaven, and which looked to me so lofty and
so safe, there it lies broken to pieces, and the hand that struck it
down was my own weakness. It would almost seem as if this weakness of
mine had more power than what we call moral strength for that which it
took the one years to build up, was wrecked by the other in a' moment.
In weakness only am I a giant."

Paulus shivered at these words, for he was cold. Early in that morning
when he had taken upon himself Hermas' guilt he had abjured wearing his
sheepskin; now his body, accustomed to the warm wrap, suffered severely,
and his blood coursed with fevered haste through his veins since the
efforts, night-watches, and excitement of the last few days. He drew his
little coat close around him with a shiver and muttered, "I feel like a
sheep that has been shorn in midwinter, and my head burns as if I were a
baker and had to draw the bread out of the oven; a child might knock me
down, and my eyes are heavy. I have not even the energy to collect
my thoughts for a prayer, of which I am in such sore need. My goal is
undoubtedly the right one, but so soon as I seem to be nearing it, my
weakness snatches it from me, as the wind swept back the fruit-laden
boughs which Tantalus, parched with thirst, tried to grasp. I fled from
the world to this mountain, and the world has pursued me and has flung
it