And just in time.

There had not been an hour to lose.

After that Croisset and his half-breed wife would have laid down their lives for Father Roland--and for him.

For the forest people had begun to accept him as a part of Father Roland; more and more he could see their growing love for him, their gladness when he came, their sorrow when he left, and it gave him what he thought of as a sort of _filling_ satisfaction, something he had never quite fully experienced before in all his life.
He knew that he would come back to them again some day--that, in the course of his life, he would spend a great deal of time among them.

He assured Father Roland of this.
The Missioner did not question him deeply about his "friends" in the western mountains.