Thirty-eight! And he was nine then, with slender legs and tousled hair, and a worship for his mother that had mellowed and perhaps saddened his whole life.

It was a long time ago.

But the songs had lived.

They must be known over the whole world--those songs his mother used to sing.

He began to join in where he could catch the tunes, and his voice sounded strange and broken and unreal to him, for it was a long time since those boyhood days, and he had not lifted it in song since he had sung then--with his mother.
* * * * * It was growing dusk when they came to the Missioner's home on God's Lake.