fingers along the bright steel, and fondled the handle, as does a hunter
the tried weapon which has been his through many seasons. When the old
man came back he said to the boy: "Why do you look at the axe?"

"I don't know," was the answer; "maybe because my mother used to sing a
song about the wood-cutters." Without a word, and thinking much, he
stepped out into the path leading to the little city, the lad holding one
hand. Years afterwards men spoke with a sort of awe or reverence of
seeing the beautiful stranger lad leading old Felion into the
plague-stricken place, and how, as they passed, women threw themselves at
Felion's feet, begging him to save their loved ones. And a drunkard cast
his arm round the old man's shoulder and sputtered foolish pleadings in
his ear; but Felion only waved them back gently, and said: "By-and-by,
by-and-by--God help us all!"

Now a fevered hand snatched at him from a doorway, moanings came from
everywhere, and more than once he almost stumbled over a dead body;
others he saw being carried away to the graveyard for hasty burial. Few
were the mourners that followed, and the faces of those who watched the
processions go by were set and drawn. The sunlight and the green trees
seemed an insult to the dead.

They passed into the house where the sick woman lay, and some met him at
the door with faces of joy and meaning; for now they knew the woman and
would have spoken to him of her; but he waved them off, and put his
fingers upon his lips and went where a fire burned in a kitchen, and
brewed his medicines. And the child entered the room where his mother
lay, and presently he came to the kitchen and said: "She is asleep--my
mother."