No other
but himself and Mukoki heard the sound of the violin, and this fact, in
time, impressed David with the deep faith and affection of the Little
Missioner. One evening Father Roland came from the room with his face
aglow with some strange happiness that had come to him in there, and
placing his hands on David's shoulders he said, with a yearning and yet
hopeless inflection in his voice:
"I wish you would stay with me always, David. It has made me younger,
and happier, to have a son."
In David there was growing--but concealed from Father Roland's eyes for
a long time--a strange insistent restlessness. It ran in his blood, like
a thing alive, whenever he looked at the face of the Girl. He wanted to
go on.
And yet life at the Chateau, after the first two weeks, was anything but
dull and unexciting. They were in the heart of the great trapping
country. Forty miles to the north was a Hudson's Bay post where an
ordained minister of the Church of England had a mission. But Father
Roland belonged to the forest people alone. They were his "children,"
scattered in their shacks and tepees over ten thousand square miles of
country, with the Chateau as its centre. He was ceaselessly on the move
after that first fortnight, and David was always with him.
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