door-where is he?"

"He is dead of the plague," they replied, "and the other also that came
with him, who fled before the sickness, fell dead of it on the roadside,
going to the sea."

"Why should I go?" he replied, and he turned threateningly to his weapon,
as if in menace of their presence.

"You have no one to leave behind," they answered eagerly, "and you are
old."

"Liars," he rejoined, "let the little city save itself!" and he wheeled
and went into his house, and they saw that they had erred in not
remembering his daughter, whose presence they had once prized. They saw
that they had angered him beyond soothing; and they went back in grief,
for two of them had lost dear relatives by the fell sickness. When they
told what had happened, the people said: "We will send the women; he will
listen to them--he had a daughter."

That afternoon, when all the hills lay still and dead, and nowhere did
bird or breeze stir, the women came, and they found him seated with his
back turned to the town. He was looking into the deep woods, into the hot
shadows of the trees.

"We have come to bring you to the little city," they said to him; "the
sick grow in numbers every hour."

"It is safe in the hills," he answered, not looking at them. "Why do the
people stay in the valley?"