and presented them to their King as slaves. The boys, who were intelligent and lovable, soon gained the affections of their barbarian master. Arrived at manhood, they were given positions of trust in the kingdom and loaded with every honor. Frumentius, the elder, was especially beloved by the King, over whom he gained a great influence for good. But the King fell sick and, being near to death, called his wife, to whom he had left the guardianship of his young son. "Let Frumentius help you in the government," he said; "he is wiser and more faithful than any in the kingdom."

The Queen Mother accordingly appointed Frumentius as the tutor of the young King, and Governor of the State, while his brother Ædesius was given a less important position. Frumentius, whose earnest desire was to see the land that he governed Christian, summoned all the Christian merchants who came to trade in the country and, giving them presents, begged them to build houses of prayer and to do their utmost to win the barbarians to the Faith. There were many conversions, and by the time the young King had reached his majority, several Christian communities were scattered throughout the State.

His task being now at an end, Frumentius asked leave to return to his own land with his brother Ædesius. They had a hard task to persuade the King and the Queen Mother to let them go, but at last they prevailed.

Frumentius, whose heart was yearning over the country to which he owed so much, had come straight to the Patriarch of Alexandria to beg of him that he would send a Bishop to preside over the growing number of churches in Abyssinia and to preach the Faith in the districts where it was not yet known.

The Patriarch and the Bishops had followed the story with the greatest interest. When Frumentius ceased speaking, there was a moment of silence, broken suddenly by Athanasius himself.

"Who is more worthy of such a ministry," he cried, "than the man who stands before us?"

The suggestion was approved by all. Frumentius was ordained by the Patriarch, who gave him his blessing and bade him return to his mission. He was honored as a Saint in Abyssinia, where he labored zealously all his life for Christ. Ædesius, his brother, became a priest also and helped in the good work.

Athanasius, as we have already seen, had spent a part of his youth with the monks of the desert. It was his proudest boast that he had acted as acolyte to the great St. Antony. He resolved, therefore, to visit the district known as the Thebaid, where St. Pachomius, the father of monasticism in the East, had founded many monasteries and drawn up a rule for the monks.

Pachomius had been one of a body of young soldiers seized against their will and forced to fight in the wars between Constantine and Maxentius. It happened one day during a journey that they landed at Thebes in Egypt, where they were treated with harshness and cruelty. Hungry, poorly clad and miserable, the young soldiers were lamenting their ill fortune when a party of strangers approached them from the town, welcoming them as friends and brothers and giving them food, garments and all that they so badly needed.

"Who are these good men?" asked Pachomius of a bystander.

"They are Christians," was the answer. "They are kind to everyone, but especially to strangers."

"What is a Christian?" persisted the young soldier.

"A man who believes in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, and does good to all," was the reply.

Pachomius reflected for a few minutes and then withdrew a little way from his companions. "Almighty God, who have made Heaven and earth," he cried, lifting his hands to Heaven, "if You will hear my prayer and give me a knowledge of Your Holy Name, and deliver me from the position in which I am, I promise You that I will consecrate myself to Your service forever."

Not long after, Pachomius was set free and, seeking out a Christian priest, received Baptism and instruction. Then, going at once to the cell of an old hermit called Palemon, famous for his holy and mortified life, he knocked at the door of his hut.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" asked the old man, opening his door a few inches.

"I am called Pachomius, and I want to be a monk," was the answer.

"You cannot be a monk here," said Palemon. "It is a hard thing to be a true monk, and there few who persevere."

"Perhaps so," replied Pachomius; "but all people are not alike."

"I have already told you," repeated the old man, "that you cannot be a monk here. Go elsewhere and try; if you persevere you can come back."

"I would rather stay with you," said Pachomius.

"You do not know what you are asking," answered Palemon. "I live on bread and salt; I pray and do penance the greater part of the night—sometimes the whole night through."

Pachomius shivered, for he was a sound sleeper, but he replied sturdily enough:

"I hope in Jesus Christ that, helped by your prayers, I shall persevere."

Palemon could resist him no longer. He took the young man to live with him and found him a humble and faithful disciple. After some years, the two hermits went together to the desert of the Thebaid and began the work to which God had called Pachomius, for Palemon died soon after.

Many monasteries were founded, and men flocked to the desert to give themselves to God. They slept on the bare ground, fasted continually and cultivated the barren earth or made baskets and mats of the coarse reeds that grew in the marshes, selling them for the profit of the poor. Twice during the night the weird blast of the horn that summoned them to prayer broke the vast silence of the desert.

Hearing of the arrival of Athanasius, Pachomius came down from his lonely monastery of Tabenna, surrounded by his monks; but he hid himself among them from humility, or from the fear that Athanasius would do him too much honor. The Saint, however, detected the Saint, and they were soon firm friends. To the Patriarch, the monks of Egypt represented all that was best and strongest in the national spirit. On these men he knew he could rely, and his hopes were not disappointed. The solitaries of the desert, to a man, would be faithful to Athanasius during the years of trial that followed.

Indeed, wherever Athanasius went throughout his vast diocese, the hearts of all loyal and noble men went out to him instinctively. He was a precious gift of God to Egypt—a precious gift of God to the whole Catholic Church.

Chapter 5 FALSE WITNESSES

THE storm of persecution which was to fall with such fury upon St.
Athanasius was already gathering.

Constantia, the Emperor's favorite sister, who had always been strongly in favor of the Arians, became very ill. The priest who attended her on her deathbed, a friend and tool of Eusebius of Nicomedia, induced her to persuade Constantine, who visited her continually during her illness, that Arius and his friends had been unjustly condemned and that the judgment of God would fall on him and his empire in consequence. Constantine, always easily influenced by his immediate surroundings, began to waver. Constantia soon died, but the Arian priest continued the work that had been so successfully begun. Arius believed all that the Church believed, he pleaded; let him at least be allowed to come into the presence of the Emperor; let him have a chance to prove his innocence.

Although Constantine had heard with his own ears the blasphemies of the heresiarch, although he had approved so heartily of the decision of the Council which condemned him and