"Not till dawn," commanded the beggar. "Let them suffer for their sins.
We hold the knowledge of life and death in our hands."

"But my father, and Tang-a-Dahit, and Pango Dooni."

"Are they without sin?" asked the beggar scornfully. "At dawn,
only at dawn!"

So they sat and waited till dawn. And when the sun was well risen, the
beggar threw wide open the door of the house, and called aloud to the
horsemen far off, and Cumner's Son waved with his hand; and McDermot came
galloping to them. He jumped from his horse and wrung the boy's hand,
then that of the beggar, then talked in broken sentences, which were
spattered by the tears in his throat. He told Cumner's Son that his face
was as that of one who had lain in a grave, and he called aloud in a
blustering voice, and beckoned for troopers to come. The whole line
moved down on them, horsemen and soldiers and people.

The city was saved from the Red Plague, and the people, gone mad with
joy, would have carried Cumner's Son to the Palace on their shoulders,
but he walked beside the beggar to his father's house, hillsmen in front
and English soldiers behind; and wasted and ghostly, from riding and
fighting and watching, he threw himself upon the bed in his own room, and
passed, as an eyelid blinks, into a deep sleep.

But the beggar sat down on a mat with a loaf of bread, a bowl of goat's
milk, and a long cigar which McDermot gave him, and he received idly all
who came, even to the sick man, who ere the day was done was brought to
the Residency, and, out of danger and in his right mind, lay in the shade