That night Father Roland was restless.  Hours later, when he was lying snug and warm in his own blankets, David heard him get up, and watched him as he scraped together the burned embers of the fire and added fresh fuel to them.  The flap of the tent was back a little, so that he could see plainly.  It could not have been later than midnight.  The Missioner was fully dressed, and as the fire burned brighter David could see the ruddy glow of his face, and it struck him that it looked singularly boyish in the flame-glow.  He did not guess what was keeping the Missioner awake until a little later he heard him among the dogs, and his voice came to him, low and exultingly, and as boyish as his face had seemed:  “We’ll be home to-morrow, boys—­home!” That word—­home—­sounded oddly enough to David up here three hundred miles from civilization.  He fancied that he heard the dogs shuffling in the snow, and the satisfied rasping of their master’s hands.

Father Roland did not return into the tent again that night.  David fell asleep, but was roused for breakfast at three o’clock, and they were away before it was yet light.  Through the morning darkness Mukoki led the way as unerringly as a fox, for he was now on his own ground.  As dawn came, with a promise of sun, David wondered in a whimsical sort of way whether his companions, both dogs and men, were going mad.  He had not as yet experienced the joy and excitement of a northern homecoming, nor had he dreamed that it was possible for Mukoki’s leathern face to break into wild jubilation.  As the first rays of the sun shot over the forests, he began, all at once, to sing, in a low, chanting voice that grew steadily louder; and as he sang he kept time in a curious way with his hands.  He did not slacken his pace, but kept steadily on, and suddenly the Little Missioner joined him in a voice that rang out like the blare of a bugle.  To David’s ears there was something familiar in that song as it rose wildly on the morning air.

“Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Ta ba nin ga,
Ah no go suh nuh guk,
Na quash kuh mon;
Na guh mo yah nin koo,
Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Ta ba nin go.”

“What is it?” he asked, when Father Roland dropped back to his side, smiling and breathing deeply.  “It sounds like a Chinese puzzle, and yet ...”

The Missioner laughed.  Mukoki had ended a second verse.

“Twenty years ago, when I first knew Mukoki, he would chant nothing but Indian legends to the beat of a tom-tom,” he explained.  “Since I’ve had him he has developed a passion for ’mission singing’—­for hymns.  That was ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee.’”

Mukoki, gathering wind, had begun again.

“That’s his favourite,” explained Father Roland.  “At times, when he is alone, he will chant it by the hour.  He is delighted when I join in with him.  It’s ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.’”

“Ke wa de noong a yah jig,
Kuh ya ’gewh wah bun oong,
E gewh an duh nuh ke jig,
E we de ke zhah tag,
Kuh ya puh duh ke woo waud
Palm e nuh sah wunzh eeg,
Ke nun doo me goo nah nig
Che shuh wa ne mung wah.”