e
lonely hill, and once a white fish-eagle came from the Dniester and
screamed above the hermit's head. Sometimes red dots were seen on the
green plain where the antelopes grazed, and often a wolf howled in the
darkness from the base of the rocks. Such was the uneventful life of
Simon Melas the anchorite, until there came the day of wrath.

It was in the late spring of the year 375 that Simon came out from his
cell, his gourd in his hand, to draw water from the spring. Darkness had
closed in, the sun had set, but one last glimmer of rosy light rested
upon a rocky peak, which jutted forth from the hill, on the further side
from the hermit's dwelling. As Simon came forth from under his ledge,
the gourd dropped from his hand, and he stood gazing in amazement.

On the opposite peak a man was standing, his outline black in the fading
light. He was a strange, almost a deformed figure, short-statured,
round-backed, with a large head, no neck, and a long rod jutting out
from between his shoulders. He stood with his face advanced, and his
body bent, peering very intently over the plain to the westward. In a
moment he was gone, and the lonely black peak showed up hard and naked
against the faint eastern glimmer. Then the night closed down, and all
was black once more.

Simon Melas stood long in bewilderment, wondering who this stranger
could be. He had heard, as had every Christian, of those evil spirits
which were wont to haunt the hermits in the Thebaid and on the skirts of
the Ethiopian waste. The strange shape of this solitary creature, its
dark outline and prowling, intent attitude, suggestive rather of a
fierce, rapacious beast than of a man, all helped him to believe that he
had at last encountered one of those wanderers from the pit, of whose
existence, in those days of robust faith, he had no more doubt than of
his own. Much of the night he spent in prayer, his eyes glancing
continually at the low arch of his cell door, with its curtain of deep
purple wrought with stars. At any instant some crouching monster, some
horned abomination, might peer in upon him, and he clung with frenzied
appeal to his crucifix, as his human weakness quailed at the thought.
But at last his fatigue overcame his fears, and falling upon his couch
of dried grass, he slept until the bright daylight brought him to his
senses.

It was later than was his wont, and the sun was far above the horizon.
As he came forth from his cell, he looked across