rejko,
when Bacha was getting ready in the afternoon.

"I am going on foot; that would be too far for you, my boy," said
Bacha, stroking the boy's head. "You just remain with your mother
and wait for your grandfather here. At the station I shall take a
carriage; I think that in the evening, about eight o'clock, we shall
be here."

Bacha kissed the boy, though he usually did not do so, and in a moment
his giant-like figure disappeared in the thicket by the clearing. He
picked the shortest way over paths well-known to him, but still it
took about two hours before he reached the main road leading to J----.
There he suddenly stopped. He turned to the east, where on a steep
rock stood an old, recently repaired cross. Oh, human memory, how
strange thou art! Bacha needed only to look at the cross, and at once,
as if the years flew back, it seemed to him as if he was standing
there like a nineteen-year-old youth. A desire overtook him to go up
to the cross, bend over its side and look again on the path on which,
on that summer morning, his brother, Stephen, had left, never to
return again. He went on that "breaking" ship to a "cold grave." Bacha
Filina could not resist that desire. For about a quarter of an hour
he kneeled at the cross, and rested his forehead on the stone step.
Inexpressible sorrow shook him. It wanted to rob him of his assurance
of forgiveness, but in and around him it was suddenly as if somebody
sang:

"My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour Divine!
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away;
Oh, let me from this day,
Be wholly Thine!"

His heavy load of sin had been cleansed by that precious blood! The
Lord Jesus took his guilt with Him on the cross and the Holy God had
forgiven him! But what was he doing here now? What had he come here
for? What did he waste the time here for? Yonder in the cottage,
Ondrejko's mother was half-alive and half-dead, and from afar her
father from beyond the ocean was coming to his child. If he, Filina,
would delay here, they might miss each other at the station.

Bacha stood up, dusted off his Sunday clothes, put his firm arm around
the cross and bent over, as once many years ago! It was good that the
cross was firm and also the arm that clung to it. Bacha saw on the
sloping path a man of slim figure, in a gentleman's suit, drawing
near. Just then he stopped. He turned round; he took his hat from his
head and looked in the d