nd, or a brother. Cowards have
fled, and many of them have fallen by the way."

"Last summer I lay sick here many weeks and none came near me--why
should I go to the little city?" he demanded austerely. "Four times I
saved it, and of all that I saved none came to give me water to
drink, or food to eat, and I lay burning with fever, and thirsty and
hungry--God of heaven, how thirsty!"

"We did not know," they answered humbly; "you came to us so seldom, we
had forgotten; we were fools."

"I came and went fifty years," he answered bitterly, "and I have
forgotten how to rid the little city of the plague!"

At that one of the women, mad with anger, made as if to catch him by his
beard, but she forbore, and said: "Liar--the men shall hang you to your
own rooftree!"

His eyes had a wild light, but he waved his hand quietly, and answered:
"Begone, and learn how great a sin is ingratitude."

He turned away from them gloomily, and would have entered his home,
but one of the women, who was young, plucked his sleeve, and said
sorrowfully: "I loved Carille, your daughter."

"And forgot her and her father. I am three-score and ten years, and she
has been gone fifteen, and for the first time I see your face," was his
scornful reply.

She was tempted to say: "I was ever bearing children and nursing them,
and the hills were hard to climb, and my husband would not go;" but she
saw how dark his look was, and she hid her face in her hands and turned
away to follow after the others. She had five little children, and her
heart was anxious for them and her eyes full of tears.

Anger and remorse seized on the little city, and there were those who
would have killed Felion, but others saw that the old man had been
sorely wronged in the past, and these said: "Wait until the morrow and
we will devise something."

That night a mule-train crept slowly down the mountain side and entered
the little city, for no one who came with them knew of the plague. The
caravan had come from the east across the great plains, and not from the
west, which was the travelled highway to the sea. Among them was a woman
who already was ill of a fever, and knew naught of what passed round
her. She had with her a beautiful child; and one of the women of the
place devised a thing. "This woman," she said, "does not belong to the
little city, and he can have nothing against her; she is a stranger.
Let one of us take this beautiful lad to him, and he shall ask Feli