ee his suffering father.

It was now some hours since Hermas and Paulus had left the wounded
anchorite, and he still lay alone in his cave. The sun, as it rose
higher and higher, blazed down upon the rocks, which began to radiate
their heat, and the hermit's dwelling was suffocatingly hot. The pain of
the poor man's wound increased, his fever was greater, and he was very
thirsty. There stood the jug, which Paulus had given him, but it was
long since empty, and neither Paulus nor Hermas had come back. He
listened anxiously to the sounds in the distance, and fancied at first
that he heard the Alexandrian's footstep, and then that he heard loud
words and suppressed groans coming from his cave. Stephanus tried to
call out, but he himself could hardly hear the feeble sound, which, with
his wounded breast and parched mouth, he succeeded in uttering. Then
he fain would have prayed, but fearful mental anguish disturbed his
devotion. All the horrors of desertion came upon him, and he who had
lived a life overflowing with action and enjoyment, with disenchantment
and satiety, who now in solitude carried on an incessant spiritual
struggle for the highest goal--this man felt himself as disconsolate and
lonely as a bewildered child that has lost its mother.

He lay on his bed of pain softly crying, and when he observed by
the shadow of the rock that the sun had passed its noonday height,
indignation and bitter feeling were added to pain, thirst and weariness.
He doubled his fists and muttered words which sounded like soldier's
oaths, and with them the name now of Paulus, now of his son. At last
anguish gained the upperhand of his anger, and it seemed to him, as
though he were living over again the most miserable hour of his life, an
hour now long since past and gone.

He thought he was returning from a noisy banquet in the palace of the
Caesars. His slaves had taken the garlands of roses and poplar leaves
from his brow and breast, and robed him in his night-dress; now, with a
silver lamp in his hand, he was approaching his bedroom, and he smiled,
for his young wife was awaiting him, the mother of his Hermas. She was
fair and he loved her well, and he had brought home witty sayings to
repeat to her from the table of the emperor. He, if any one, had a right
to smile. Now he was in the ante-room, in which two slave-women were
accustomed to keep watch; he found only one, and she was sleeping
and breathing deeply; he still smiled as he