ly, he said again: "If two sinners meet
they can best praise Christ by going each his own way in silence."

After that he shut his lips and continued motionless while the boy
brushed the flies from his eye-sockets; but the Hermit's heart sank,
and for the first time he felt all the weariness of the way he had
fared, and the great distance dividing him from home.

He had meant to take counsel with the Saint concerning his lauds, and
whether he ought to destroy them; but now he had no heart to say
another word, and turning away he began to descend the mountain.
Presently he heard steps running behind him, and the boy came up and
pressed a honey-comb in his hand.

"You have come a long way and must be hungry," he said; but before the
Hermit could thank him he had hastened back to his task. So the Hermit
crept down the mountain till he reached the wood where he had slept
before; and there he made his bed again, but he had no mind to eat
before sleeping, for his heart hungered more than his body; and his
salt tears made the honey-comb bitter.

III

ON the fourteenth day he came to the valley below his cliff, and saw
the walls of his native town against the sky. He was footsore and heavy
of heart, for his long pilgrimage had brought him only weariness and
humiliation, and as no drop of rain had fallen he knew that his garden
must have perished. So he climbed the cliff heavily and reached his
cave at the angelus.

But there a great wonder awaited him. For though the scant earth of the
hillside was parched and crumbling, his garden-soil reeked with
moisture, and his plants had shot up, fresh and glistening, to a height
they had never before attained. More wonderful still, the tendrils of
the gourd had been trained about his door, and kneeling down he saw
that the earth had been loosened between the rows of sprouting
vegetables, and that every leaf sparkled with drops as though the rain
had but newly ceased. Then it appeared to the Hermit that he beheld a
miracle, but doubting his own deserts he refused to believe himself
worthy of such grace, and went within doors to ponder on what had
befallen him. And on his bed of rushes he saw a young woman sleeping,
clad in an outlandish garment, with strange amulets about her neck.

The sight was very terrifying to the Hermit, for he recalled how often
the demon, in tempting the Desert Fathers, had taken the form of a
woman for their undoing; but he reflected that, since there w