After supper there was another song from Arthur Wemyss, the young Englishman.  He played his own accompaniment, his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work, ran lightly over the keys.  Every person sat still to listen.  Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers and leaned forward.  It was a simple little English ballad he sang: 

   Where’er I wander over land or foam,
   There is a place so dear the heart calls home.

Perhaps it was because the ocean rolled between him and his home that he sang with such a wistful longing in his voice, that even his dullest listener felt the heart-cry in it.  It was a song of one who reaches longing arms across the sea to the old home and the old friends, whom he sees only in his dreams.

In the silence that followed the song, his fingers unconsciously began to play Mendelssohn’s beautiful air, “We Would See Jesus, for the Shadows Lengthen.”  Closely linked with the young man’s love of home was his religious devotion.  The quiet Sabbath morning with its silvery chimes calling men to prayer; the soft footfalls in the aisle; the white-robed choir, his father’s voice in the church service, so full of divine significance; the many-voiced responses and the swelling notes of the “Te Deum”—­he missed it so.  All the longing for the life he had left, all the spiritual hunger and thirst that was in his heart sobbed in his voice as he sang: 

   We would see Jesus,
      For the shadows lengthen
   O’er this little landscape of our life. 
      We would see Jesus,
   Our weak faith to strengthen,
      For the last weariness, the final strife. 
   We would see Jesus, other lights are paling,
      Which for long years we have rejoiced to see,
   The blessings of our pilgrimage are failing,
      We would not mourn them for we go to Thee.

He sang on with growing tenderness through all that divinely tender hymn, and the longing of it, the prayer of it was not his alone, but arose from every heart that listened.

Perhaps they were in a responsive mood, easily swayed by emotion.  Perhaps that is why there was in every heart that listened a desire to be good and follow righteousness, a reaching up of feeble hands to God.  The Reverend Hugh Grantley would have said that it was the Spirit of God that stands at the door of every man’s heart and knocks.

The young man left the organ, and the company broke up soon after.  Before they parted, Mr. Slater in whom the Englishman’s singing had revived the spiritual hunger of his Methodist heart, requested them to sing “God be with you till we meet again.”  Every one stood up and joined hands.  Martha, with her thoughts on the butter and eggs; Tonald McKenzie and big John with the vision of their lonely dwellings in the hills looming over them; Jim and Camilla; Tom and Nellie, hand in hand; little Billy, face to face with the long struggle and its certain ending.  Little Billy’s voice rang sweet and clear above the others—­