Father Cyril and his wife did their best to make Velia happy. The girl was very affectionate, and responded warmly to the love they displayed. Father Cyril bestowed upon her more caresses and indulgences than he might have done if she had gone to him under happier circumstances. The little Stundist orphans left in his charge in the village gave him more anxious thought and care than all the rest of his flock. He felt more responsible to God for their welfare. Could he bring them back into the safe fold of the Church? But Velia was not young enough to be made Orthodox. She was nearly ten years old when she was forcibly taken away from her own home, and she had been trained in the Stundist faith from her earliest childhood. The traditions of her mother's ancestors, the Scotch Covenanters, had been the fairy tales told to her by Michael, long before she could grasp their meaning. They had played at being persecuted whilst they were children—it was no new thing to her. But now she understood what it meant. These real persecutions linked her to the children who had suffered so long ago in Scotland; the mysterious tie of blood relationship awoke within her. She too would die rather than forsake the faith of her father and his people. "My Velia," said Father Cyril one day, after the village schoolmistress had been complaining of her, "could not you, to please me, bow to the holy icon, and cross yourself when you go to school? The teacher complains of you and some of the other children. They will all do as you do, dear child." "Oh, I cannot!" she cried, with tears. "If I could, I'd do it to please you. But I know it's wrong, and God would be displeased. I must obey God." "My child, they are nothing but signs," urged Father Cyril. "Surely you love the Lord Christ, and couldn't you, to show your love to Him, use the sign of the cross on which He died for us? And you reverence the Mother of Christ—cannot you bow to a representation of her? All these actions are only symbols. I have seen you kiss the keepsakes your father and Michael gave you. Do these things in remembrance of our Lord and His Mother." Velia stood looking into his face with an air of perplexity and hesitation. "Oh, it does not mean that to them!" she answered, pointing towards the village. "They really pray to the icon as if it was God; and they cross themselves out of fear, not for remembrance. They think they will have bad luck. I cannot do it; no, never! But oh, I wish I could, to please you!" The girl stooped down and kissed his hand fondly. Father Cyril sighed, but said no more. He told the schoolmistress gently not to observe the Stundist children too closely. They would conform in time, if they were discreetly dealt with. But Okhrim, the Starosta, was one of the managers of the school, and the zeal of the teacher led her to take her complaint to him.