Most pitiable was the scene which awaited him there.  People were really dying in the streets, as he had been told.  Some were already dead.  A mother had died in front of her cottage, and her little children sat crying beside her body.  Another, with a look of despair in her eyes, sat rocking the dead body of the child.  The men seemed to have fled.

The Prince’s plans were soon formed.  He had stores enough to last his party and himself for a year.  He would share these with the villagers as far as they would go.  He had tents also for the journey.  He would use these for a home to his own party and for hospitals for the sick.  Before the sun had set, the tents for his own party were erected on a breezy height outside the village.  And, ere the sun had arisen the next morning, the largest tent of all had been set in a place by itself, ready to receive the sick.

Goldenday and his sister never reached the country where the images of all the Ages are to be found.  A chance of doing good met them on their journey, and they said to each other, “It has been sent to us by God.”  They turned aside that they might make it their own.  They spent the year in the deeds of mercy to which it called them among the plague-stricken villagers.

It would take too long to tell all that this good Prince and his sister achieved in that year.  The village lay in a hollow among dense woods and on the edge of a stagnant marsh.  The Prince had the marsh drained and the woods thinned.  Every house in the village was thoroughly repaired and cleaned.  The sick people were taken up to the tent-hospital and cared for until they got well.  The men who had fled returned.  The terrified mothers ventured back.  The sickness began to slacken.  In a few months it disappeared.  Then the Prince caused wells to be dug to supply water for drinking.  Then he built airy schools for the children.  Last of all he repaired the church, which had fallen into ruin, and trained a choir of boys to sing thanks to God.  But when all these things had been accomplished, the year during which he was to have searched for the Golden Age was within a few weeks of its close.  And, what was worse, it was too plain to his sister that the Prince’s health had suffered by his toils.  Night and day he had labored in his service of love.  Night and day he had carried the burden of the sickness and infirmities of the village in his heart.  It had proved a burden greater than he could bear.  He had toiled on till he saw health restored to every home.  He toiled until he saw the village itself protected from a second visitation of the plague.  But his own strength was meanwhile ebbing away.  The grateful villagers observed with grief how heavily their deliverer had to lean on his sister’s arm in walking.  And tears, which they strove in vain to conceal, would gather in their eyes as they watched the voice that had so often cheered them sinking into a whisper, and the pale face becoming paler every day.