lled, and Felion's daughter came quickly to him, and with
tears for her father and smiles for her husband, she left the valley and
journeyed into the east, having sworn to love and cherish him while she
lived. And her father, left solitary, mourned for her, and drew away
into a hill above the valley in a cedar house that he built; and having
little else to love, loved the earth, and sky, and animals, and the
children from the little city when they came his way. But his heart was
sore; for by-and-by no letters came from his daughter, and the little
city, having prospered, concerned it self no more with him. When he came
into its streets there were those who laughed, for he was very tall and
rude, and his grey hair hung loose on his shoulders, and his dress was
still a hunter's. They had not long remembered the time when a grievous
disease, like a plague, fell upon the place, and people died by scores,
as sheep fall in a murrain. And again they had turned to him, and he,
because he knew of a miraculous medicine got from Indian sachems, whose
people had suffered of this sickness, came into the little city, and by
his medicines and fearless love and kindness stayed the plague.

And thus once more he saved the little city from disaster, and they
blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.

In time they ceased to think of Felion at all, and he was left alone;
even the children came no more to visit him; and he had pleasure only
in hunting and shooting and in felling trees, with which he built a high
stockade and a fine cedar house within it. And all the work of this
he did with his own hands, even to the polishing of the floors and the
carved work of the large fireplaces. Yet he never lived in the house,
nor in any room of it, and the stockade gate was always shut; and when
any people passed that way they stared and shrugged their shoulders, and
thought Felion mad or a fool. But he was wise in his own way, which
was not the way of those who had reason to bless him for ever, and who
forgot him, though he had served them through so many years. Against the
little city he had an exceeding bitterness; and this grew, and had it
not been that his heart was kept young by the love of the earth, and the
beasts about him in the hills, he must needs have cursed the place and
died. But the sight of a bird in the nest with her young, and the smell
of a lair, and the light of the dawn that came out of the east, and the
winds that cam