Parables of a Province | Page 3

went on, then twilight came. Presently the
sounds grew fainter, and exquisitely painful, and now a low sob
seemed to pass through all the heart of the organ, and then silence fell,
and in the sacred pause, Hepnon came out among them all, pale and
desolate. He looked at them a minute most sadly, and then lifting up his
arms towards the Golden Pipes, now hidden in the dusk, he cried low
and brokenly:
"O my God, give me back my dream!"
Then his crutch seemed to give way beneath him, and he sank upon the
ground, faint and gasping.
They raised him up, and women and men whispered in his ear
"Ah, the beautiful, beautiful music, Hepnon!" But he only said: "O my
God, O my God, give me back my dream!" When he had said it thrice,
he turned his face to where his organ was in the cedar-house, and then
his eyes closed, and he fell asleep: and they could not wake him. But at
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
he waited and watched he was always poor, and also was getting old.
There was no house or home within fifty miles of them, and only now
and then some wandering Indians lifted the latch, and drew in beside
their hearth, or a good priest with a soul of love for others, came and
said Mass in the room where a little Calvary had been put up. Two
children had come and gone, and Tinoir and Dalice had dug their
graves and put them in a warm nest of maple leaves, and afterwards
lived upon the memories of them. But after these two, children came no
more; and Tinoir and Dalice grew closer and closer to each other,
coming to look alike in face, as they had long been alike in mind and
feeling. None ever lived nearer to nature than they, and wild things
grew to be their friends; so that you might see Dalice at her door
tossing crumbs with one hand to birds, and with the other bits of meat
to foxes, martens, and wild dogs, which came and went unharmed by
them. Tinoir shot no wild animals for profit--only for food and for
skins and furs to wear. Because of this he was laughed at by all who
knew, save the priest of St. Sulpice, who, on Easter Day, when the little
man came yearly to Mass over two hundred miles of country, praised
him to his people, and made much of him, though Tinoir was not vain
enough to see it.
When word came down the river, and up over the hills to Tinoir, that
war was come and that he must go to watch for the hostile fleet and for
the friendly fleet as well, he made no murmur, though it was the time of

harvest, and Dalice had had a sickness from which she was not yet
recovered.
"Go, my Tinoir," said Dalice, with a little smile, "and I will reap the
grain. If your eyes are sharp you shall see my bright sickle moving in
the sun."
"There