“We too have a dog which is still young, but he also will be big when he grows up,” Ondrejko said, appraisingly.

“And where are you going?”

“Only up here on the rock to see what is behind it.  In our country we also have a large rock, but much higher and broader, and when you look down from it it seems as if you look down into Sunshine Valley, as the story goes.  And after the storm a rainbow appears, like Heaven’s gate which appeared once to Jacob in a dream.  Once upon a time I believed that Heaven’s gate was only there, but today I know that Heaven is everywhere open that the Lord Jesus might come to us where and when He wants to.  Do you know Him too?”

“Who?” wondered the boys.

“The Son of God, the Lord Jesus.  But I see already that you do not know Him, and He surely sent me to you, so that I could tell you all that I know.  Do you have time?”

“We can spend about an hour,” said Petrik, who felt the new stranger was very friendly and he would like to have him for a comrade.

“Let us then sit down here on the rock, and I will tell you how it was that I came to the Sunshine Valley the first time, and what kind of book I found there.  I have it even here with me because I could not be without it.  But tell me first your name.  I am called Palko, though they once baptized me in the name of Nicholas.  But this is a long story.”

“My name is Petrik, and he is called Ondrejko.  At home they call him Andreas de Gemer in the Magyar tongue, but Bacha Filina says, ’Why should we break our tongues with foreign names?’ Anyhow, Ondrejko is much nicer,” zealously spoke Petrik.

“That is a nice name.  It was the name of one of the disciples of the Lord Jesus who brought to Him the boy with the loaves and fishes.  I have it beautifully written in this book.”

In the meantime the boys climbed the rock, sat down, and the new comrade drew out a book carefully wrapped up in paper and began to tell them the beautiful things about it.  If one would want to repeat them it would take a whole book.[A]

[Footnote A:  See first part of “Sunshine Country.”]

Among other things, he told them that whosoever takes this book into his hands dare not read it otherwise than word for word, from the beginning to the end, because only in this way will he get to know the Way which leads to the true Sunshine Country, where, through the Heaven’s gates, the Lord Jesus went to prepare a place for all those who obediently went that way.

The boys would not have tired listening till the evening, but suddenly Fido came, and as if he knew that with such a dog as Dunaj he mustn’t start a fight, just licked his comrades and was friendly to the stranger.  His arrival reminded the boys of Bacha, and what he would say if they stayed too long.  They rose, and Palko promised to accompany them that they might show him where their hut was standing, and when he had time he would come to visit them.