"Gradually these sounds grew less insistent, and soft as a breath of air--hardly perceptible at first--there rose from the valley below, like a curl of smoke mounting into the stillness, a strain of low, sweet music, and as suddenly ceased. I bent my head, wondering whether I was dreaming. I had heard that same music, when I was a boy at home, wafted toward me from the open window of the village church. How came it here? Why sing it? Why torture me with it--who would never see home again? "I struggled to my feet, steadied myself against a cotton-tree, and fixed my eyes on the valley below; my ears strained to catch the first recurrent note. Again it rose on the night air, this time strong and clear, as if a company of angels were singing. "I knew now! "It was the hymn my friend the missionary had taught the children. "I plunged down the hill, stumbling, falling, only to drag myself to my feet again, groping my way through the dense night fog and the tangle of undergrowth, until I reached the small stockade at the foot of the incline which circled the missionary station. Crossing this ground, I followed the path and entered a small gate. Beyond it lay a flat piece of land cleared of all underbrush, and at its extreme end the rude bamboo hut of a hospital filled with sick and dying children. "Once more on the deadly night air rose the hymn, a note of exaltation now, calling me on--to what I knew not, nor did I care, so it would ease the grinding fear under which I had lived for weeks. "Suddenly I came to a halt. In the faint moonlight, within a dozen yards of me, knelt the figure of a man. He was praying--his hands upraised, his face lifted--the words falling from his lips distinctly audible. I moved nearer. Before him was a new-made grave--one he had dug himself--to cover the body of a child who had died at sunset. "It was a moment I have never forgotten, and never want to forget. "On the hill above me were the men I had left--a frenzied body of bestial cowards who had dishonored themselves, their race, and their God; here beside me, huddled together, a group of forest children--spawn of cannibal and savage--racked with fever, half-starved, many of them delirious, their souls rising to heaven on the wings of a song. "And then the kneeling man himself!--his courage facing death every hour of the day--alone--no one to help--only his Maker as witness. I tell you, gentlemen, that when I stood beside him and looked into his eyes, caught the tones of his voice, and watched the movement of his fingers patting the last handfuls of earth over the poor little nameless body, and realized that his only recompense lay in that old line I used to hear so often when I was a boy--'If ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me'--I could have gone down on my knees beside him and thanked my Creator that He had sent me to him." IX IN WHICH MADAME LA MARQUISE BINDS UP BROKEN HEADS AND BLEEDING HEARTS