A yell ran along the vast circle. Philammon was hurried away by the attendants, and Pelagia, her face still hidden by her hands, walked slowly away and vanished among the palms at the back of the stage. A cloud, whether of disgust or disappointment, now hung upon every brow, and there was open murmuring at the cruelty and heathenry of the show. Hypatia was utterly unnerved. Orestes alone rose to the crisis. In a well-studied oration he declared that Heraclian the African was conquerer of Rome, and a roar of hired applause supported him. Then the prefect of the guards encouraged the city authorities to salute Orestes as emperor, and Hypatia, amid shouts of her aristocratic scholars, rose and knelt before him, writhing inwardly with shame and despair. At the same moment a monk's voice shouted from the highest tiers in the theatre, "It is false! False! You are tricked! Heraclian was utterly routed; Cyril has known it, every Jew has known it, for a week past. So perish all the enemies of the Lord, caught in their own snare!" For a minute an awful silence fell on all who heard; and then arose a tumult, which Orestes in vain attempted to subdue. The would-be emperor summoned his guards around him and Hypatia, and made his way out as best he could, while the multitude melted away like snow before the rain, to find every church placarded by Cyril with the particulars of Heraclian's ruin. Two days later, when Hypatia went to give her farewell lecture to her pupils--for all hope was dead--a mob of monks and their followers seized her, dragged her into the church of the Caesareum, and there, before the great, still figure of Christ, Peter struck her down, and the mob tore her limb from limb. _IV.--Back to the Desert_ Philammon had done his best, struggling in vain, to pierce the dense mass of people, and save Hypatia. He had been wedged against a pillar, unable to move, in the great church. The little fruit porter, alone of all her disciples, fought his way through the mob, only to be thrown down the steps. When all was over in the church, and Hypatia was dead, and the mob had rushed out, Philammon sank down exhausted outside, and the little porter burst out into a bitter agony of human tears. "She is with the gods," said the porter at last. "She is with the God of gods," answered Philammon. Then he felt that he must arise and flee for his life. He had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it. Arsenius was in the right after all. Home to the desert. But first he would go himself, alone, and find Pelagia, and implore her to flee with him. * * * * * Abbot Pambo, as well as Arsenius, had been dead several years; the abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, by a hermit from the neighbouring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, and his loving wisdom.