Thompson spent an hour there, an hour which was far from conducive to a cheerful survey of the field wherein his spiritual labors would lie.  Aside from Sam Carr, who appeared to be looked upon as the Nestor of the village, the Lachlans were the only persons who either spoke or understood a word of English.  And Thompson found himself more or less tongue-tied with them, unable to find any common ground of intercourse.  They were wholly illiterate.  As a natural consequence the world beyond the Athabasca region was as much of an unknown quantity to them as the North had been to Thompson before he set foot in it—­as much of its needs and customs were yet, for that matter.  The Lachlan virtues of simplicity and kindliness were overcast by obvious dirt and a general slackness.  In so far as religion went if they were—­as Breyette had stated—­fond of preachers, it was manifestly because they looked upon a preacher as a very superior sort of person, and not because of his gospel message.

For when Mrs. Lachlan hospitably brewed a cup of tea and Thompson took the opportunity of making his customary prayer before food an appeal for divine essence to be showered upon these poor sinful creatures of earth, the Lachlan family rose from its several knees with an air of some embarrassing matter well past.  And they hastened to converse volubly upon the weather and the mosquitoes and Sam Carr’s garden and a new canoe that Lachlan’s boys were building, and such homely interests.  As to church and service they were utterly dumb, patently unable to follow Thompson’s drift when he spoke of those things.  If they had souls that required salvation they were blissfully unconscious of the fact.

But they urged him to come again, when he rose to leave.  They seemed to regard him as a very great man, whose presence among them was an honor, even if his purposes were but dimly apprehended.

The three walked back across the meadow, Breyette and MacDonald chattering lightly, Thompson rather preoccupied.  It was turning out so different from what he had fondly imagined it would be.  He had envisaged a mode of living and a manner of people, a fertile field for his labors, which he began to perceive resentfully could never have existed save in his imagination.  He had been full of the impression, and the advice and information bestowed upon him by the Board of Missions had served to heighten the impression, that in Lone Moose he would fill a crying want.  And he was not so obtuse as to fail of perceiving that no want of him or his message existed.  It was discouraging to know that he must strive mightily to awaken a sense of need before he could begin to fulfill his appointed function of showing these people how to satisfy that need.