to you to think how sorely your poor father needed sleep, you would have
lain still this night."

"I could not," said the youth sullenly. "And you know very well that I
scourged myself hard enough."

"That was quite right, for you deserved a flogging for a misconducted
boy."

Hermas looked defiantly at his reproving friend, the flaming color
mounted to his cheek: for he remembered the shepherdess's words that he
might go and complain to his nurse, and he cried out angrily:

"I will not let any one speak to me so; I am no longer a child."

"Not even your father's?" asked Paulus, and he looked at the boy with
such an astonished and enquiring air, that Hermas turned away his eyes in
confusion.

"It is not right at any rate to trouble the last remnant of life of that
very man who longs to live for your sake only."

"I should have been very willing to be still, for I love my father as
well as any one else."

"You do not beat him," replied Paulus, "you carry him bread and water,
and do not drink up the wine yourself, which the Bishop sends him home
from the Lord's supper; that is something certainly, but not enough by a
long way."