"Let us sit down a while," said Palko when they had picked the flowers
and placed them in the nearby spring. "I would like to tell you
something. Do you remember anything about your mother?"

"About my mother?" said the surprised Ondrejko. That kind of question
he did not expect. "I remember but a little, that she was very
beautiful, and had a very fine voice."

"And if she suddenly came for you, would you be glad?"

"For me?" and the boy's beautiful eyes opened wide. "She cannot come
for me any more, because I do not belong to her, but to father."

"And what did the lady where you lived formerly tell you about her?"

"That she left father and me because she loved the theatre more than
us, and because sometimes the people hitched themselves to wagons
instead of horses, and gave her beautiful jewels."

"And you believed it?" retorted Palko, with clouded face.

"No, I did not believe it, because I loved her, loved her very much."

"You are right; don't you believe it. Bacha Filina told me that she
went away because your father's family did not like her because she
was not of noble birth as themselves. But she went to the theatre only
because she could not make her living otherwise. Your father brought
her from a very great distance to which she could not return. What
could she do? What the theatre is, I do not know. Only that she sang
there beautifully. Perhaps that would not have been so bad if she had
known the Lord Jesus as we know Him. He would surely have advised and
helped her otherwise, and if that which she did was wrong, when she
once knows Jesus and asks Him to forgive her, He will do so. But we
must tell her about Him, you and I."

"We? But she is far away, very far."

"Do not believe it, Ondrejko. The Lord Jesus sent her back as far as
here. The lady at our cottage--that is she."

"You say that is she?" Ondrejko jumped up.

"Yes, yes; that is she."

"She was just like her, and had the same kind of a voice! And so it
aroused in my heart remembrances of long ago when she spoke and when
I looked at her. It seems to me I recognized her, but she didn't know
me," sadly sighed the boy, and his eyes filled with tears.

"But how could she have recognized you in those farmer's clothes? We
too, Petrik and I, hardly recognized you."

"Do you think so?" Ondrejko calmed down. "Palko, take me to her; she
doesn't know that I am her Andreas. She doesn't know me."

"She knows already. Uncle Filina was ther