The senator turned, and looked at the steward from head to foot with so
dark a glance, that he drew back, and began to speak quickly. But he was
interrupted by the children's clamors on the stairs and by Sirona, who
brought Hermas to the senator, and said laughing: "I found this great
fellow on the stairs, he was seeking you."

"Petrus looked at the youth, not very kindly, and asked: "Who are you?
what is your business?" Hermas struggled in vain for speech; the
presence of so many human beings, of whom three were women, filled him
with the utmost confusion. His fingers twisted the woolly curls on his
sheep-skin, and his lips moved but gave no sound; at last he succeeded in
stammering out, "I am the son of old Stephanus, who was wounded in the
last raid of the Saracens. My father has hardly slept these five nights,
and now Paulus has sent me to you--the pious Paulus of Alexandria--but
you know--and so I--"

"I see, I see," said Petrus with encouraging kindness. "You want some
medicine for the old man. See Dorothea, what a fine young fellow he is
grown, this is the little man that the Antiochian took with him up the
mountain."

Hermas colored, and drew himself up; then he observed with great
satisfaction that he was taller than the senator's sons, who were of
about the same age as he, and for whom he had a stronger feeling, allied
to aversion and fear, than even for their stern father. Polykarp
measured him with a glance, and said aloud to Sirona, with whom he had
exchanged a greeting, are off whom he had never once taken his eyes since
she had come in: If we could get twenty slaves with such shoulders as
those, we should get on well. There is work to be done here, you big
fellow--"