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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Don't be sorry for me; be sorry for mother, please," said the boy, and he laid a hand on the old man's knee, and that touch went to a heart long closed against the little city below; and Felion rose and said: "I will go with you to your mother."
"Did he die of the plague?" asked Felion, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder. "No," said the lad quickly, and shut his lips tight. "Won't you tell me?" asked Felion, with a strange inquisitiveness. "No. Mother'll tell you, but I won't." The lad's eyes filled with tears. "Poor boy poor boy!" said Felion, and his hand tightened on the small shoulder.
"My name is Felion," answered the lad; and he put his face close to the jug that held the steaming tinctures: but the old man caught the little chin in his huge hand and bent back the head, looking long into the lad's eyes. At last he caught little Felion's hand and hurried into the other room, where the woman lay in a stupor. The old man came quickly to her and looked into her face.
In time they ceased to think of Felion at all, and he was left alone; even the children came no more to visit him; and he had pleasure only in hunting and shooting and in felling trees, with which he built a high stockade and a fine cedar house within it. And all the work of this he did with his own hands, even to the polishing of the floors and the carved work of the large fireplaces.
The bright steel of Felion's axe, standing in the corner, caught the lad's eye and held it. Felion saw, and said: "What are you thinking of?" The lad answered: "Of the axe. When I'm bigger I will cut down trees and build a house, a bridge, and a city. Aren't you coming quick to help my mother? She will die if you don't come."
But Felion, seeing, ran out upon the girders of a bridge that was being builded, and there, before them all, as the raft passed under, he let himself fall, breaking his leg as he dropped among the timbers of the fore-part of the raft; for the children were all gathered at the back, where the great oars lay motionless, one dragging in the water behind.
In spite of himself, Felion smiled in a sour sort of way, for the boy had called the place a village, and he relished the unconscious irony. "What is the matter with her?" asked Felion, beckoning the lad inside. The lad came and stood in the doorway, gazing round curiously, while the old man sat down and looked at him, moved, he knew not why.
Felion did not speak at first, but stood looking, and presently the child said: "I have come to fetch you." "To fetch me where, little man?" asked Felion, a light coming into his face, his heart beating faster. "To my mother. She is sick." "Where is your mother?" "She's in the village down there," answered the boy, pointing.
One day at last, in the full tide of summer, a man, haggard and troubled, came to Felion's house, and knocked, and, getting no reply, waited; and whenever he looked down at the little city he wrung his hands, and more than once he put them up to his face and shuddered, and again looked for Felion.
And he, Felion, who had been lord and master of the valley, worked with them, but did not seek for riches, and more often drew away into the hills to find some newer place unspoiled by man. But again and again he returned; for no fire is like the old fire, and no trail like the old trail.
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