The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

“This is charity that you give. I cannot repay you for the shelter. I am a mendicant, old, feeble, very near to death.”

“And I am a hermit. The lonely have need of little. What I possess, therefore, I will share with you.”

So they began their meal. It was a silent one. The stranger did not make any effort to talk; and Oman, watching him, sank by degrees into a fit of abstraction in which his memory moved, groping, searching, wandering back through time to find the clew to his recognition of this man. The stranger himself, though probably he had been in a half-starved condition, showed no great eagerness for his food. He ate slowly and little, and seemed to droop forward, while he sat, with the weariness of age; and Oman began to wonder how he had ever reached such a height as the Silver Peak.

While they sat there at their meal, the sun set, and the swift twilight faded. And when the old man rose and moved toward the mouth of the cave, the stars were shining, close overhead. After gazing for a moment at the shadowy lines of hills stretching away to the east and west, the old man turned to his host, and said:

“I will go out now and spend the night upon the mountain. For the hospitality you have given me, I thank you, in the name of Siva.”

“Out upon the mountain! Why, thou wilt perish there! The nights are cold at this height. Nay, surely my cave is large enough for two. Remain here till dawn, at least, O stranger.”

The old man turned on him those peculiar eyes, in which there now lurked an expression of suspicion, of craftiness, of secrecy:—the expression of a dotard; and there was an evil smile upon the old, trembling lips as he said: “No, no. I shall sleep alone. There is no one to prevent me. Hermit, it is thirty years since I slept in a human habitation. No, no. No one shall get the better of me in my sleep. No, no. And look you,” his tone grew querulously savage, “look you that you do not try to seek out my bed!” As he spoke these last words, one hand crept up to a string that was about his throat, its end lost under his robe, and the other went to his girdle, wherein a knife was stuck.

Believing him now to be insane, Oman made no further protest; and the man, with another look at him, went out into the darkness of the eastern slope, with a step that tottered with weakness.

Amazed by the strange incident, Oman turned into his cave again, and, worn out with many days of privation and discomfort, lay down to sleep. All night his dreams were troubled. The personality of the old man had laid strong hold upon him, and he appeared in his sleep: now in the guise of some grewsome spirit of evil, now as a guardian angel shielding him from mysterious dangers. Oman woke at dawn, troubled and scarcely refreshed, the old man still uppermost in his thoughts. Possibly he had been feverish through the night; for his mouth was parched, and he longed for water. In the cool twilight of new day he rose, crossed the open plateau, and went a little down the eastern slope to the spring. As he reached his destination, his ear caught a faint sound that came from some distance to the right:—the sound of a human voice, moaning, as if from pain.

Oman hurriedly started toward it; and, after some moments’ search, came upon the body of the wanderer, lying in a smooth space surrounded by trees. His eyes were closed, his color ghastly, and, from his parted lips there came, with every breath, the deep moan that had drawn Oman thither. The hermit knelt beside his strange visitor and lifted one of the cold hands. At the touch, the prostrate one opened his eyes, as it were with an effort. Seeing Oman beside him, he murmured, with a suggestion of relief in his tone: