ukoki had ended a second verse.

"Twenty years ago, when I first knew Mukoki, he would chant nothing but
Indian legends to the beat of a tom-tom," he explained. "Since I've had
him he has developed a passion for 'mission singing'--for hymns. That
was 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"

Mukoki, gathering wind, had begun again.

"That's his favourite," explained Father Roland. "At times, when he is
alone, he will chant it by the hour. He is delighted when I join in with
him. It's 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains.'"

"Ke wa de noong a yah jig,
Kuh ya 'gewh wah bun oong,
E gewh an duh nuh ke jig,
E we de ke zhah tag,
Kuh ya puh duh ke woo waud
Palm e nuh sah wunzh eeg,
Ke nun doo me goo nah nig
Che shuh wa ne mung wah."

At first David had felt a slight desire to laugh at the Cree's odd
chanting and the grotesque movement of his hands and arms, like two pump
handles in slow and rhythmic action, as he kept time. This desire did
not come to him again during the day. He remembered, long years ago,
hearing his mother sing those old hymns in his boyhood home. He could
see the ancient melodeon with its yellow keys, and the ragged hymn book
his mother had prized next to her Bible; and he could hear again her
sweet, quavering voice sing those gentle songs, like unforgettable
benedictions--the same songs that Mukoki and the Missioner were chanting
now, up here, a thousand miles away. That was a long time ago--a very,
very long time ago. She had been dead many years. And he--he must be
growing old. 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. It was almost a chateau, David thought when he first saw it, built
of massive logs. Beyond it there was a smaller building, also built of
logs, and toward this Mukoki hurried with the dogs and the sledge. He
heard the we