“Your treasures?” Bacha was surprised still, not knowing whether it was a beautiful, but impossible dream.  He could not get enough of the voice that was speaking to him.  The face was older, changed, but the voice was the same.  It always sounded to Peter Filina like music.  And so it was today.

“We are expecting the father of Madame Slavkovsky today, and I am going to meet him.”

“I am that father.”

“You, Stephen?” Bacha released the stranger.  “I do not understand that.”

“I believe you, my Peter.  Well, how you have changed, how strong you have gotten, how giantlike, like the beautiful mountains all around!  I would not have recognized you, if it were not for the voice—­no one has called me thus since—­and by your eagle eyes under those heavy eyebrows.”

“Stephen, tell me, how is it possible that you live?  Was not that ship wrecked?”

“Yes, Peter, she went to the bottom of the sea; but I was among the few immigrants which another ship saved.  God does not want the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live; so He saved me.  The first steady work that I had in America was on the farm of Mr. Slavkovsky.  My daughter wrote me that she told you everything about us.  Thus you know what Slavkovsky asked of me and that I agreed to do as he wished.  When he heard from me that I did not want you to know that I still lived, he advised me to adopt his name and thus disappear forever from this world.  His wife and son, and even my good wife, agreed with it.  Thus Stephen Pribylinsky died and only Stephen Slavkovsky remained.  I could not return home and live with you, as our father planned.  Eva was your wife and I loved her.  I did not really know God and the Lord Jesus then, nor understood His Holy Law; but this much I knew, that it would have been a constant and a great temptation for us all.  Thus, I chose to die to you.”

Slavkovsky finished, and out of Bacha’s breast came a deep sigh.  “You died for us, and until recently I worried very much about it, that I had become a murderer and was like Cain.”

“You?  And why?”

“Did I not drown you the second time in that swamp, by driving you to America?  Eva loved you more.  Had it not been for me, you could have lived as happily as in Paradise.  You would have been mated much better.  At my side, she perished of sorrow.  My father did not live long; I took care of mother, but could not replace her son to her.  See yonder the burnt remains of our hut, where we once lived so happily.  Years ago, when I took up this service which I have held ever since, I rented it to a neighbor.  He did not take good care and it burned down.  I could, but would not rebuild it.  What would it have been good for to me?  I was forsaken in the world, like a stick.”

Sudden quietness prevailed on the step at the foot of the cross, where both men sat.  It seemed that the popular song could be applied to them: