scornful reply.

She was tempted to say: "I was ever bearing children and nursing them,
and the hills were hard to climb, and my husband would not go;" but she
saw how dark his look was, and she hid her face in her hands and turned
away to follow after the others. She had five little children, and her
heart was anxious for them and her eyes full of tears.

Anger and remorse seized on the little city, and there were those who
would have killed Felion, but others saw that the old man had been sorely
wronged in the past, and these said: "Wait until the morrow and we will
devise something."

That night a mule-train crept slowly down the mountain side and entered
the little city, for no one who came with them knew of the plague. The
caravan had come from the east across the great plains, and not from the
west, which was the travelled highway to the sea. Among them was a woman
who already was ill of a fever, and knew naught of what passed round her.
She had with her a beautiful child; and one of the women of the place
devised a thing. "This woman," she said, "does not belong to the little
city, and he can have nothing against her; she is a stranger. Let one of
us take this beautiful lad to him, and he shall ask Felion to come and
save his mother."

Every one approved the woman's wisdom, and in the early morning she
herself, with another, took the child and went up the long hillside in
the heavy heat; and when they came near Felion's house the women stayed
behind, and the child went forward, having been taught what to say to the
old man.