deep secrets of worldly policy, known only to himself? So, when the
little lane of holy men, each peering stealthily over his plaiting
work from the doorway of his sandstone cell, saw the abbot, after his
unwonted passion, leave the culprit kneeling, and take his way toward
the sage's dwelling, they judged that something strange and delicate had
befallen the common weal, and each wished, without envy, that he were as
wise as the man whose counsel was to solve the difficulty.

For an hour or more the abbot remained there, talking earnestly and
low; and then a solemn sound as of the two old men praying with sobs and
tears; and every brother bowed his head, and whispered a hope that He
whom they served might guide them for the good of the Laura, and of His
Church, and of the great heathen world beyond; and still Philammon knelt
motionless, awaiting his sentence; his heart filled-who can tell how?
'The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not
with its joy.' So thought he as he knelt; and so think I, too, knowing
that in the pettiest character there are unfathomable depths, which the
poet, all-seeing though he may pretend to be, can never analyse, but
must only dimly guess at, and still more dimly sketch them by the
actions which they beget.

At last Pambo returned, deliberate, still, and slow, as he had gone, and
seating himself within his cell, spoke--

'And the youngest said, Father, give me the portion of goods that
falleth to my share.... And he took his journey into a far country, and
there wasted his substance with riotous living. Thou shalt go, my son.
But first come after me, and speak with Aufugus.'

Philammon, like everyone else, loved Aufugus; and when the abbot
retired and left the two alone together, he felt no dread or shame about
unburdening his whole heart to him. Long and passionately he spoke, in
answer to the gentle questions of the old man, who, without the rigidity
or pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted the youth, and let
himself be interrupted in return, gracefully, genially, almost
playfully. And yet there was a melancholy about his tone as he answered
to the youth's appeal--

'Tertullian, Origen, Clement, Cyprian--all these moved in the world;
all these and many more beside, whose names we honour, whose prayers
we invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought and
laboured, unspotted, in the world; and why not I? Cyril the patriarch
himself, was h