sunrise the next morning a shiver passed through him, and then a cold
quiet stole over him, and Hepnon and the music of the Golden Pipes
departed from the Voshti Hills, and came again no more.




THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE

"Height unto height answereth knowledge."

His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered
above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of country
towards the great city. There came a time again when all the land was
threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were sailing hard to
reach the wide basin before the walled city, the one to save, the other
to destroy. If Tinoir, the Guardian of the Fire, should sight the
destroying fleet, he must light two fires on Shaknon Hill, and then, at
the edge of the wide basin, in a treacherous channel, the people would
send out fire-rafts to burn the ships of the foe. Five times in the past
had Tinoir been the Guardian of the Fire, and five times had the people
praised him; but praise and his scanty wage were all he got.

The hut in which he lived with his wife on another hill, ten miles from
Shaknon, had but two rooms, and their little farm and the garden gave
them only enough to live--no more. Elsewhere there was good land in
abundance, but it had been said years ago to Tinoir by the great men,
that he should live not far from Shaknon, so that in times of peril he
might guard the fire and be sentinel for all the people. Perhaps Tinoir
was too dull to see that he was giving all and getting naught; that while