not long remembered the time when a grievous disease, like a plague, fell
upon the place, and people died by scores, as sheep fall in a murrain.
And again they had turned to him, and he, because he knew of a miraculous
medicine got from Indian sachems, whose people had suffered of this
sickness, came into the little city, and by his medicines and fearless
love and kindness stayed the plague.

And thus once more he saved the little city from disaster, and they
blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.

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. 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. Against the little
city he had an exceeding bitterness; and this grew, and had it not been
that his heart was kept young by the love of the earth, and the beasts
about him in the hills, he must needs have cursed the place and died. But
the sight of a bird in the nest with her young, and the smell of a lair,
and the light of the dawn that came out of the east, and the winds that
came up from the sea, and the hope that would not die kept him from being
of those who love not life for life's sake, be it in ease or in sorrow.
He was of those who find all worth the doing, even all worth the
suffering; and so, though he frowned and his lips drew tight with anger