I will not trouble you; I give you leave to call me heretic, or heathen, if you will, if I cross this threshold till Cyril himself sends for me back to shame you.' And he turned, and forced his way to the gate, amid a yell of derision which brought every drop of, blood in his body into his cheeks.

Twice, as he went down the vaulted passage, a rush was made on him from behind, but the soberer of his persecutors checked it.

Yet he could not leave them, young and hot-headed as he was, without one last word, and on the threshold he turned.
'You! who call yourselves the disciples of the Lord, and are more like the demoniacs who abode day and night in the tombs, crying and cutting themselves with stones--' In an instant they rushed upon him; and, luckily for him, rushed also into the arms of a party of ecclesiastics, who were hurrying inwards from the street, with faces of blank terror.
'He has refused!' shouted the foremost.

He declares war against the Church of God!' 'Oh, my friends,' panted the archdeacon, 'we are escaped like the bird out of the snare of the fowler.

The tyrant kept us waiting two hours at his palace-gates, and then sent lictors out upon us, with rods and axes, telling us that they were the only message which he had for robbers and rioters.' 'Back to the patriarch!' and the whole mob streamed in again, leaving Philammon alone in the street--and in the world.
Whither now?
He strode on in his wrath some hundred yards or more before he asked himself that question.