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 direction where once stood Filina’s hut.  All that marked the place were a few half-burned timbers, now overgrown with weeds.  Oh, that face!  There was only one like it, never forgotten, younger—­but nevertheless!

Bacha closed his eagle eyes that they might not fool him.  He opened them only when the steps drew nearer to him from below.  He let go the cross and crossed his arms on his chest.  Looking up he stood face to face with the stranger.

“Good evening,” said he.

“Oh, Stephen!” It came out of the chest of Bacha.  Half cry, half terror.

“Peter!  Is it you!” Two arms twined around Filina’s neck.

“Stephen!  You live?  Really?  It is not possible!”

“I live, Peter, and at last, I am coming.  It is rather late, it’s true, but I did not know before that the loved one who once separated us, had passed away long ago, and that you and I would not have any more heartaches.  I am coming to you for my treasures, which are in your care.”