A minute later he was sousing his face in a big tin wash-basin, and then drying it on a towel that had once been a burlap bag.  But he had noticed that it was clean—­as clean as the pink-flushed face of Marie.  And the Frenchman himself, with all his hair, and his beard, and his rough-worn clothing, was as clean as the burlap towelling.  Being a stranger, suddenly plunged into a life entirely new to him, these things impressed David.

When they sat down to the table—­Thoreau sitting for company, and Marie standing behind them—­he was at a loss at first to know how to begin.  His plate was of tin and a foot in diameter, and on it was a three-pound mallard duck, dripping with juice and as brown as a ripe hazel-nut.  He made a business of arranging his sleeves and drinking a glass of water while he watched the famished Little Missioner.  With a chuckle of delight Father Roland plunged the tines of his fork hilt deep into the breast of the duck, seized a leg in his fingers, and dismembered the luscious anatomy of his plate with a deft twist and a sudden pull.  With his teeth buried in the leg he looked across at David.  David had eaten duck before; that is, he had eaten of the family anas boschas disguised in thick gravies and highbrow sauces, but this duck that he ate at Thoreau’s table was like no other duck that he had ever tasted in all his life.  He began with misgivings at the three-pound carcass, and he ended with an entirely new feeling of stuffed satisfaction.  He explored at will into its structure, and he found succulent morsels which he had never dreamed of as existing in this particular bird, for his experience had never before gone beyond a leg of duck and thinly carved slices of breast of duck, at from eighty cents to a dollar and a quarter an order.  He would have been ashamed of himself when he had finished had it not been that Father Roland seemed only at the beginning, and was turning the vigour of his attack from duck to rabbit and onion.  From then on David kept him company by drinking a third cup of coffee.

When he had finished Father Roland settled back with a sigh of content, and drew a worn buckskin pouch from one of the voluminous pockets of his trousers.  Out of this he produced a black pipe and tobacco.  At the same time Thoreau was filling and lighting his own.  In his studies and late-hour work at home David himself had been a pipe smoker, but of late his pipe had been distasteful to him, and it had been many weeks since he had indulged in anything but cigars and an occasional cigarette.  He looked at the placid satisfaction in the Little Missioner’s face, and saw Thoreau’s head wreathed in smoke, and he felt for the first time in those weeks the return of his old desire.  While they were eating, Mukoki and another Indian had brought in his trunk and bags, and he went now to one of the bags, opened it, and got his own pipe and tobacco.  As he stuffed the bowl of his English briar, and lighted the tobacco, Father Roland’s glowing face beamed at him through the fragrant fumes of his Hudson’s Bay Mixture.