What chiefly occupied Cheviot, as the St. Olaf sped through the windy drizzle, was a growing wonder as to how Hildegarde’s father had come to be stranded up here all these months, and how a man accustomed to creature comforts, a cripple, and close on sixty—how had he endured the conditions of life at “Golovin!” What were the conditions at Golovin? Curious to know, for Hildegarde would ask—afraid to know, for Hildegarde must be answered, he kept seeing in flashes and as through the eyes of a girl, all the probable harshness of the old man’s adventure.
Cheviot’s questions about Golovin were interrupted by Mr. Christianson somewhat narrowly—eliciting an account of how the mission prospered; what the native population was; how many were converts; and other matters not strictly to the point Cheviot had in mind.
“Yes, oh, yes! Dere is great acti-vitty. You can see in our reports. Ve make great progress. Ve bring de true light to many who sat in darkness. But ve arre poore—meezerabble poore. Nobody knows, what haf not lief dere, how harrd de life. Eh, Björk?”
Björk, sheet in hand, gloomily assented, without the aid of speech.
Cheviot caught his glancing eye. “Are you—a—a—at the mission, too?”
The dark man studied the course and held on his silent way.
“Oh, yes. Mr. Björk ees von of os. He is not long dere—but he understand. Ve haf great need of vorkers. So he come.”
“You mean you sent home for Mr. Björk?”
Mr. Christianson stared a moment. “Send home? Oh, it is far to Sveden. Heaven is nearer.”
It was Cheviot’s turn for mystification.