s," said
another, "that we should feed them? Let us take his cloak and drive off
his flock, and leave him to die in his own time."

With a kick and a curse they left him. He opened his eyes and lay quiet
for a moment, with his twisted smile, watching the stars.

"You creep like snails," he said. "I thought you had marked my time
tonight. But not even that is given to me for nothing. I must pay for
all, it seems."

Far away, slowly scattering and receding, he heard the rustling and
bleating of his frightened flock as the robbers, running and shouting,
tried to drive them over the hills. Then he stood up and took the
shepherd's pipe, a worthless bit of reed, from the breast of his tunic.
He blew again that plaintive, piercing air, sounding it out over the
ridges and distant thickets. It seemed to have neither beginning nor
end; a melancholy, pleading tune that searched forever after something
lost.

While he played, the sheep and the goats, slipping away from their
captors by roundabout ways, hiding behind the laurel bushes, following
the dark gullies, leaping down the broken cliffs, came circling back to
him, one after another; and as they came, he interrupted his playing,
now and then, to call them by name. When they were nearly all
assembled, he went down swiftly toward the lower valley, and they
followed him, panting. At the last crook of the path on the steep
hillside a straggler came after him along the cliff. He looked up and
saw it outlined against the sky. Then he saw it leap, and slip, and
fall beyond the path into a deep cleft.

"Little fool," he said, "fortune is kind to you! You have escaped from
the big trap of life. What? You are crying for help? You are still in
the trap? Then I must go down to you, little fool, for I am a fool too.
But why I must do it, I know no more than you know."

He lowered himself quickly and perilously into the cleft, and found the
creature with its leg broken and bleeding. It was not a sheep but a
young goat. He had no cloak to wrap it in, but he took off his turban
and unrolled it, and bound it around the trembling animal. Then he
climbed back to the path and strode on at the head of his flock,
carrying the little black kid in his arms.

There were houses in the Valley of the Mills; and in some of them
lights were burning; and the drone of the mill-stones, where the women
were still grinding, came out into the night like the humming of drowsy
bees. As the women heard the