“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 words were spoken in a low monotone without emphasis or emotion, and David was convinced they were a message from the Missioner, something Father Roland wanted him to know without speaking the words himself.  Not again after that first night did he apologize for his visits to the room, nor did he ever explain why the door was always locked, or why he invariably locked it after him when he went in.  Each night, when they were at home, he disappeared into the room, opening the door only enough to let his body pass through; sometimes he remained there for only a few minutes, and occasionally for a long time.  At least once a day, usually in the evening, he played the violin.  It was always the same piece that he played.  There was never a variation, and David could not make up his mind that he had ever heard it before.  At these times, if Mukoki happened to be in the Chateau, as Father Roland called his place, he would sit like one in a trance, scarcely breathing until the music had ceased.  And when the Missioner came from the room his face was always lit up in a kind of halo.  There was one exception to all this, David noticed.  The door was never unlocked when there was a visitor.  No other but himself and Mukoki heard the sound of the violin, and this fact, in time, impressed David with the deep faith and affection of the Little Missioner.  One evening Father Roland came from the room with his face aglow with some strange happiness that had come to him in there, and placing his hands on David’s shoulders he said, with a yearning and yet hopeless inflection in his voice: 

“I wish you would stay with me always, David.  It has made me younger, and happier, to have a son.”

In David there was growing—­but concealed from Father Roland’s eyes for a long time—­a strange insistent restlessness.  It ran in his blood, like a thing alive, whenever he looked at the face of the Girl.  He wanted to go on.