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Updated: May 5, 2025
At last, leaving her and the child asleep, old Felion went forth into the little city, and the people flocked to him, and for many days he came and went ceaselessly. And once more he saved the city, and the people blessed him: and the years go on. He lay where he could see her working at the forge.
Just when the dusk was rolling down, Felion came back, and, seeing the man, would have passed him without a word, but that the man stopped with an eager, sorrowful gesture and said: "The plague has come upon us again, and the people, remembering how you healed them long ago, beg you to come." At that Felion leaned his fishing-rod against the door and answered: "What people?"
He turned and went into the house and shut the door, and though the man knocked, the door was no opened, and he went back angry and miserable; and the people could not believe that Felion would no come to help them, as he had done all his life. A dawn three others came, and they found Felion looking out towards the east, his lips moving as though he prayed.
Yet he never lived in the house, nor in any room of it, and the stockade gate was always shut; and when any people passed that way they stared and shrugged their shoulders, and thought Felion mad or a fool. But he was wise in his own way, which was not the way of those who had reason to bless him for ever, and who forgot him, though he had served them through so many years.
And they came to Felion, because in his youth he had been of the best of the schoolmen; and he got up from his misery only the day before his wife had taken a great and lonely journey to that Country which welcomes, but never yields again and leaving his little child behind, he went down to the mines.
"Sing it again," said Felion. The lad began to sing: "Here shall I build me my cedar house, A city with gates, a road to the sea For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew!" The old man stopped him. "What is your name?"
Felion sat just within his doorway, looking out into the sunlight which fell upon the red and white walls of the little city, flanked by young orchards, with great, oozy meadows beyond these, where cattle ate, knee-deep in the lush grass and cool reed-beds.
Felion drew himself over to the huge oar, and with the strength of five men, while the people watched and prayed, he kept the raft straight for the great slide, else it had gone over the dam and been lost, and all that were thereon. A mile below, the raft was brought to shore, and again the people said that Felion had saved the little city from disaster.
Without a word, and thinking much, he stepped out into the path leading to the little city, the lad holding one hand. Years afterwards men spoke with a sort of awe or reverence of seeing the beautiful stranger lad leading old Felion into the plague-stricken place, and how, as they passed, women threw themselves at Felion's feet, begging him to save their loved ones.
Felion did not answer, and from the trees without two women watched him anxiously. "Why should I come?" asked Felion curiously. "Because she's sick, and she's my mother." "Why should I do it because she's your mother?" "I don't know," the lad answered, and his brow knitted in the attempt to think it out, "but I like you."
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