"Oh, how good it is to live with people. How easily one can help the
injury to another. Oh, if ever I have the luck to get back to my family,
how willingly will I help them in times of need. But who will help me, a
poor, lost boy, on this lonely island? I am like a poor bird driven from
her nest." A mighty painful longing for his father's house again seized
him. "If only a ship would come and take me back," he said.
CHAPTER III
THE SMOKE
His people too, were mourning through these weary, weary weeks. One day
the father said to the mother: "I need some willow branches and although
it is very painful for me to go to that island, still, there is no other
place where I can get them."
"Then you must not go alone," said the mother. "Take the children with
you. They will be a help and a comfort to you." Soon they were all ready
and rowed over to the island. After landing, they sat under a tree for a
while.
"This poplar tree," said the father, "is the very one under which David
and I sat the last day we were here. And over in that direction,"
pointing toward the island, "he was carried in his little boat." Tears
stood in the father's eyes; the boy, Andreas, turned his head to wipe a
tear; while the girls cried.
"Let us go now and gather nuts," said the father, to cheer them again.
They soon filled their baskets and were about to return to the boat,
when the boy said: "Dear father, let us go to the top of the hill and
get a view. I've never been up there.
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