Then Peter said, “Well, anyhow, at least he didn’t die!”

The stranger crossed his hands upon his knees. “Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “it is easier for a man to die than to stand alone. He who can stand alone can, also, when the need be, die.”

Peter looked up wistfully into the stranger’s face. “I should not like to die myself,” he said, “not yet. I shall not be twenty-one till next birthday. I should like to see life first.”

The stranger made no answer.

Presently Peter said, “Are all the men of your company poor men?”

The stranger waited a while before he answered; then he said,—“There have been rich men who have desired to join us. There was a young man once; and when he heard the conditions, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

There was silence again for a while.

“Is it long since your company was started?” asked Peter.

“There is no man living who can conceive of its age,” said the stranger. “Even here on this earth it began, when these hills were young, and these lichens had hardly shown their stains upon the rocks, and man still raised himself upwards with difficulty because the sinews in his thighs were weak. In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when he hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow man and found it sweet. Yet even in those days it came to pass that there was one whose head was higher than her fellows and her thought keener, and, as she picked the flesh from a human skull, she pondered. And so it came to pass the next night, when men were gathered around the fire ready to eat, that she stole away, and when they went to the tree where the victim was bound, they found him gone. And they cried one to another, ‘She, only she, has done this, who has always said, ‘I like not the taste of man-flesh; men are too like me; I cannot eat them.’ ‘She is mad,’ they cried; ‘let us kill her!’ So, in those dim, misty times that men reck not of now, that they hardly believe in, that woman died. But in the heads of certain men and women a new thought had taken root; they said, ‘We also will not eat of her. There is something evil in the taste of human flesh.’ And ever after, when the fleshpots were filled with man-flesh, these stood aside, and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not; then, as the years passed, none ate.