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