and from the wilderness and from the Sacred Mountain he felt impelled to fly, and he would gladly have fled then and there to a distance.  Whither should he flee?  It was all the same, for he was in search of suffering, and suffering, like weeds, grows on every road.  And from whom?  This question repeated itself again and again as if he had shouted it in the very home of echo, and the answer was not hard to find:  “It is from yourself that you would flee.  It is your own inmost self that is your enemy; bury yourself in what desert you will, it will pursue you, and it would be easier for you to cut off your shadow than to leave that behind?”

His whole consciousness was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and now, after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest depression took possession of his mind.  Exhausted, unstrung, full of loathing of himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over the occurrences of the last few days with perfect impartiality.

“Of all the fools that ever I met,” thought he, “I have gone farthest in folly, and have thereby led things into a state of confusion which I myself could not make straight again, even if I were a sage—­which I certainly never shall be any more than a tortoise or a phoenix.  I once heard tell of a hermit who, because it is written that we ought to bury the dead, and because he had no corpse, slew a traveller that he might fulfil the commandment:  I have acted in exactly the same way, for, in order to spare another man suffering and to bear the sins of another, I have plunged an innocent woman into misery, and made myself indeed a sinner.  As soon as it is light I will go down to the oasis and confess to Petrus and Dorothea what I have done.  They will punish me, and I will honestly help them, so that nothing of the penance that they may lay upon me may be remitted.  The less mercy I show to myself, the more will the Eternal judge show to me.”

He rose, considered the position of the stars, and when he perceived that morning was not far off, he prepared to return to Sirona, who was no longer any more to him than an unhappy woman to whom he owed reparation for much evil, when a loud cry of distress in the immediate vicinity fell on his ear.

He mechanically stooped to pick up a stone for a weapon, and listened.  He knew every rock in the neighborhood of the spring, and when the strange groan again made itself heard, he knew that it came from a spot which he knew well and where he had often rested, because a large flat stone supported by a stout pillar of granite, stood up far above the surrounding rocks, and afforded protection from the sun, even at noonday, when not a hand’s breath of shade was to be found elsewhere.

Perhaps some wounded beast had crept under the rock for shelter from the rain.  Paulus went cautiously forward.  The groaning sounded louder and more distinct than before, and beyond a doubt it was the voice of a human being.