In a great book the Little Missioner had their names, their ages, the blood that was in them, and where they lived; and by them he was worshipped as no man that ever lived in that vast country of cities and towns below the Height of Land.
At every tepee and shack they visited there was some token of love awaiting Father Roland; a rare skin here, a pair of moccasins there, a pair of snow shoes that it had taken an Indian woman's hands weeks to make, choice cuts of meat, but mostly--as they travelled along--the thickly furred skins of animals; and never did they go to a place at which the Missioner did not leave something in return, usually some article of clothing so thick and warm that no Indian was rich enough to buy it for himself at the Post.

Twice each winter Father Roland sent down to Thoreau a great sledge load of these contributions of his people, and Thoreau, selling them, sent back a still greater sledge load of supplies that found their way in this manner of exchange into the shacks and tepees of the forest people.
"If I were only rich!" said Father Roland one night at the Chateau, when it was storming dismally outside.

"But I have nothing, David.

I can do only a tenth of what I would like to do.

There are only eighty families in this country of mine, and I have figured that a hundred dollars a family, spent down there and not at the Post, would keep them all in comfort through the longest and hardest winter.