d white as the first-falling snow
were the thin locks that lay on his shoulders.
Like rime-covered moss hung his beard,
flowing down from his face to his girdle;
And wan was his aspect and weird,
and often he chanted and mumbled
In a strange and mysterious tongue,
as he bent o'er his book in devotion,
Or lifted his dim eyes and sung,
in a low voice, the solemn "_Te Deum_,"
Or Latin, or Hebrew, or Greek--
all the same were his words to the warriors,--
All the same to the maids and the meek,
wide-wondering-eyed, hazel-brown children.

Father Rene Menard [L]--it was he,
long lost to his Jesuit brothers,
Sent forth by an holy decree
to carry the Cross to the heathen.
In his old age abandoned to die,
in the swamps, by his timid companions,
He prayed to the Virgin on high,
and she led him forth from the forest;
For angels she sent him as men--
in the forms of the tawny Dakotas,
And they led his feet from the fen,
from the slough of despond and the desert,
Half dead in a dismal morass,
as they followed the red-deer they found him,
In the midst of the mire and the grass,
and mumbling "_Te Deum laudamus._"
"_Unktomee[72]--Ho!_" muttered the braves,
for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit
That dwells in the drearisome caves,
and walks on the marshes at midnight,
With a flickering torch in his hand,
to decoy to his den the unwary.
His tongue could they not understand,
but his torn hands all shriveled with famine
He stretched to the hunters and said:
"He feedeth his chosen with manna;
And ye are the angels of God
sent to save me from death in the desert."
His famished and woe-begone face,
and his tones touched the hearts of the hunters;
They fed the poor father apace,
and they led him away to _Ka-tha-ga._

[L] See the account of Father Menard, his mission and disappearance in
the wilderness. _Neill's Hist. Minnesota_, pp 104-107, inc.

There little by little he learned
the tongue of the tawny Dakotas;
And the heart of the good father yearned
to lead them away from their idols--
Their giants[16] and dread Thunder-birds--
their worship of stones[73] and the devil.
"_Wakan-de!_"[M] they answered his words,
for he read from his book in the Latin,