"Every man has a friend, or a wife, or a child, ill or dying, and every
woman has a husband, or a child, or a friend, or a brother. Cowards have
fled, and many of them have fallen by the way."

"Last summer I lay sick here many weeks and none came near me--why should
I go to the little city?" he demanded austerely. "Four times I saved it,
and of all that I saved none came to give me water to drink, or food to
eat, and I lay burning with fever, and thirsty and hungry--God of heaven,
how thirsty!"

"We did not know," they answered humbly; "you came to us so seldom, we
had forgotten; we were fools."

"I came and went fifty years," he answered bitterly, "and I have
forgotten how to rid the little city of the plague!"

At that one of the women, mad with anger, made as if to catch him by his
beard, but she forbore, and said: "Liar--the men shall hang you to your
own rooftree!"

His eyes had a wild light, but he waved his hand quietly, and answered:
"Begone, and learn how great a sin is ingratitude."

He turned away from them gloomily, and would have entered his home, but
one of the women, who was young, plucked his sleeve, and said
sorrowfully: "I loved Carille, your daughter."

"And forgot her and her father. I am three-score and ten years, and she
has been gone fifteen, and for the first time I see your face," was his