lcoming cries of Mukoki's family and the excited barking of
dogs as he followed Father Roland into the big cabin. It was lighted,
and warm. Evidently some one had been keeping it in readiness for the
Missioner's return. They entered into a big room, and in his first
glance David saw three doors leading from this room: two of them were
open, the third was closed. There was something very like a sobbing note
in Father Roland's voice as he opened his arms wide, and said to David:

"Home, David--your home!"

He took off his things--his coat, his cap, his moccasins, and his thick
German socks--and when he again spoke to David and looked at him, his
eyes had in them a mysterious light and his words trembled with
suppressed emotion.

"You will forgive me, David--you will forgive me a weakness, and make
yourself at home--while I go alone for a few minutes into ... that ...
room?"

He rose from the chair on which he had seated himself to strip off his
moccasins and faced the closed door. He seemed to forget David after he
had spoken. He went to it slowly, his breath coming quickly, and when he
reached it he drew a heavy key from his pocket. He unlocked the door.
It was dark inside, and David could see nothing as the Missioner
entered. For many minutes he sat where Father Roland had left him,
staring at the door.

"A strange man--a very strange man!" Thoreau had said. Yes, a strange
man! What was in that room? Why its unaccountable silence? Once he
thought he heard a low cry. For ten minutes he sat, waiting. And
then--very faintly at first, almost like a wind soughing through distant
tree tops and coming ever nearer, nearer, and more distinct--there came
to him from beyond the closed door the gently subdued music of a
violin.

CHAPTER XIV

In the days and weeks that followed, this room beyond the closed door,
and what it contained, became to David more and more the great mystery
in Father Roland's life. It impressed itself upon him slowly but
resolutely as the key to some tremendous event in his life, some vast
secret which he was keeping from all other human knowledge, unless,
perhaps, Mukoki was a silent sharer. At times David believed this was
so, and especially after that day when, carefully and slowly, and in
good English, as though the Missioner had trained him in what he was to
say, the Cree said to him:

"No one ever goes into that room, m'sieu. And no man has ever seen _mon
Pere's_ violin."

The word