Felion sat just within his doorway, looking out into the sunlight which
fell upon the red and white walls of the little city, flanked by young
orchards, with great, oozy meadows beyond these, where cattle ate,
knee-deep in the lush grass and cool reed-beds. Along the riverside, far
up on the high banks, were the tall couches of dead Indians, set on
poles, their useless weapons laid along the deerskin pall. Down the
hurrying river there passed a raft, bearing a black flag on a pole, and
on it were women and children who were being taken down to the sea from
the doomed city. These were they who had lost fathers and brothers; and
now were going out alone with the shadow of the plague over them, for
there was none to say them nay. The tall oarsmen bent to their task, and
Felion felt his blood beat faster when he saw the huge oars swing high,
then drop and bend in the water, as the raft swung straight in its course
and passed on safe through the narrow slide into the white rapids below,
which licked the long timbers as with white tongues, and tossed spray
upon the sad voyagers. Felion remembered the day when he left his own
child behind and sprang from the bridge to the raft whereon were the
children of the little city, and saved them.

And when he tried to be angry now, the thought of the children as they
watched him, with his broken leg striving against their peril, softened
his heart. He shook his head, for suddenly there came to him the memory
of a time, three-score years before, when he and the foundryman's
daughter had gone hunting flag-flowers by the little trout stream; of the
songs they sang together at the festivals, she in her sweet Quaker garb
and demure Quaker beauty, he lithe, alert, and full of the joy of life
and loving. As he sat so, thinking, he wondered where she was, and why he
should be thinking of her now, facing the dreary sorrow of this
pestilence and his own anger and vengeance. He nodded softly to the
waving trees far down in the valley, for his thoughts had drifted on to