“Did you go to the Palaestra?” asked Paulus in surprise.

“To the wrestling-school of Timagetus,” cried Hermas, coloring.  “From outside the gate I watched the games of the youths as they wrestled, and threw heavy disks at a mark.  My eyes almost sprang out of my head at the sight, and I could have cried out aloud with envy and vexation, at having to stand there in my ragged sheep-skin excluded from all competition.  If Pachomius had not just then come up, by the Lord I must have sprung into the arena, and have challenged the strongest of them all to wrestle with me, and I could have thrown the disk much farther than the scented puppy who won the victory and was crowned.”

“You may thank, Pachomius,” said Paulus laughing, “for having hindered you, for you would have earned nothing in the arena but mockery and disgrace.  You are strong enough, certainly, but the art of the discobolus must be learned like any other.  Hercules himself would be beaten at that game without practice, and if he did not know the right way to handle the disk.”

“It would not have been the first time I had thrown one,” cried the boy.  “See, what I can do!” With these words he stooped and raised one of the flat stones, which lay piled up to secure the pathway; extending his arm with all his strength, he flung the granite disk over the precipice away into the abyss.

“There, you see,” cried Paulus, who had watched the throw carefully and not without some anxious excitement.  “However strong your arm may be, any novice could throw farther than you if only he knew the art of holding the discus.  It is not so—­not so; it must cut through the air like a knife with its sharp edge.  Look how you hold your hand, you throw like a woman!  The wrist straight, and now your left foot behind, and your knee bent! see, how clumsy you are!  Here, give me the stone.  You take the discus so, then you bend your body, and press down your knees like the arc of a bow, so that every sinew in your body helps to speed the shot when you let go.  Aye—­that is better, but it is not quite right yet.  First heave the discus with your arm stretched out, then fix your eye on the mark; now swing it out high behind you—­stop! once more! your arm must be more strongly strained before you throw.  That might pass, but you ought to be able to hit the palm-tree yonder.  Give me your discus, and that stone.  There; the unequal corners hinder its flight—­ now pay attention!” Paulus spoke with growing eagerness, and now he grasped the flat stone, as he might have done many years since when no youth in Alexandria had been his match in throwing the discus.

He bent his knees, stretched out his body, gave play to his wrist, extended his arm to the utmost and hurled the stone into space, while the clenched toes of his right foot deeply dinted the soil.

But it fell to the ground before reaching which Paulus had indicated as the mark.