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The other then replied: "The people of the little city below, Felion." "I do not know your name," was the reply; "I know naught of you or of your city." "Are you mad?" cried the man. "Do you forget the little city down there? Have you no heart?" A strange smile passed over Felion's face, and he answered: "When one forgets, why should the other remember?"

And a drunkard cast his arm round the old man's shoulder and sputtered foolish pleadings in his ear; but Felion only waved them back gently, and said: "By-and-by, by-and-by God help us all!" Now a fevered hand snatched at him from a doorway, moanings came from everywhere, and more than once he almost stumbled over a dead body; others he saw being carried away to the graveyard for hasty burial.

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 Felion to come and save his mother."

The tall oarsmen bent to their task, and Felion felt his blood beat faster when he saw the huge oars swing high, then drop and bend in the water, as the raft swung straight in its course and passed on safe through the narrow slide into the white rapids below, which licked the long timbers as with white tongues, and tossed spray upon the sad voyagers.

Felion remembered the day when he left his own child behind and sprang from the bridge to the raft whereon were the children of the little city, and saved them. And when he tried to be angry now, the thought of the children as they watched him, with his broken leg striving against their peril, softened his heart.

Then there came a time when the little city was threatened with a woeful flood, because of a breaking flume; but by a simple and wise device Felion stayed the danger. And again the people blessed him; and the years went on.

And when Felion looked up towards Shaknon and Margath, a light came in his eyes, for they were wise and quiet, and watched the world, and something of their grandeur drew about him like a cloak.

Seeing, he gave a broken cry and said: "Carille, my daughter! Carille!" He drew her to his breast, and as he did so he groaned aloud, for he knew that inevitable Death was waiting for her at the door. He straightened himself up, clasped the child to his breast, and said: "I, too, am Felion, my little son."

And at last it seemed as if he had driven his tent-peg in the Long Valley for ever; for, from among the women who came, he chose one comely and wise and kind, and for five years the world grew older, and Felion did not know it. When he danced his little daughter on his knee, he felt that he had found a new world.

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."