The Lord will require the child's blood at your hands!' 'Ay,' said Peter, rising fiercely, that is the world's justice! Blame me, blame the patriarch, blame any and every one but the sinner.

As if a hot head and a hotter heart were not enough to explain it all! As if a young fool had never before been bewitched by a fair face!' 'Oh, my friends, my friends,' cried Arsenius, 'why revile each other without cause?
I, I only am to blame.

I advised you, Pambo!--I sent him--I ought to have known--what was I doing, old worldling that I am, to thrust the poor innocent forth into the temptations of Babylon?
This comes of all my schemings and my plottings! And now his blood will be on my head-as if I bad not sins enough to bear already, I must go and add this over and above all, to sell my own Joseph, the son of my old age, to the Midianites! Here, I will go with you--now--at once--I will not rest till I find hint, clasp his knees till he pities my gray hairs! Let Heraclian and Orestes go their way for aught I care--I will find him, I say.

O Absalom, my son! would to God I had died for thee, my son! my son!'.