He began to address him with hard words, but when he recognized in the belated worshipper the anchorite Paulus of Alexandria he changed his key, and said, in a soft and almost submissive tone of entreaty, “You have surely prayed enough, pious man.  The congregation have left the church, and I must close it on account of our beautiful new vessels and the heathen robbers.  I know that the brethren of Raithu have chosen you to be their elder, and that his high honor was announced to you by their messengers, for they came to see our church too and greatly admired it.  Are you going at once to settle with them or shall you keep the high-feast with us?”

“That you shall hear to-morrow,” answered Paulus, who had risen from his knees, and was leaning against a pillar of the narrow, bare, penitential chamber.  “In this house dwells One of whom I would fain take counsel, and I beg of you to leave me here alone.  If you will, you can lock the door, and fetch me out later, before you go to rest for the night.”

“That cannot be,” said the man considering, “for my wife is ill, and my house is a long way from here at the end of the town by the little gate, and I must take the key this very evening to the Senator Petrus, because his son, the architect Antonius, wants to begin the building of the new altar the first thing to-morrow morning.  The workmen are to be here by sunrise, and if—­”

“Show me the key,” interrupted Paulus.  “To what untold blessing may this little instrument close or open the issues!  Do you know, man, that I think there is a way for us both out of the difficulty!  You go to your sick wife, and I will take the key to the senator as soon as I have finished my devotions.”

The door-keeper considered for a few minutes, and then acceded to the request of the future presbyter of Raithu, while at the same time he begged him not to linger too late.

As he went by the senator’s house he smelt the savor of roast meat; he was a poor man and thought to himself, “They fast in there just when it pleases them, but as for us, we fast when it pleases us least.”

The good smell, which provoked this lament, rose from a roast sheep, which was being prepared as a feast-supper for the senator and the assembled members of his household; even the slaves shared in the late evening meal.

Petrus and Dame Dorothea sat in the Greek fashion, side by side in a half reclining position on a simple couch, and before them stood a table which no one shared with them, but close to which was the seat for the grown up children of the house.  The slaves squatted on the ground nearer to the door, and crowded into two circles, each surrounding a steaming dish, out of which they helped themselves to the brown stew of lentils with the palm of the hand.  A round, grey-looking cake of bread lay near each, and was not to be broken till the steward Jethro had cut and apportioned the sheep.  The juicy pieces of the