Then followed his time of ministry among the lepers of San Rufino d'Arce, when day by day so many disciples came to enlist in this new army of working beggars that the little hut in the leper-village could no longer hold them, and Francis had to think of some means of housing the brethren, and obtaining, what he had often desired, a chapel wherein they could say the Hours. (The saint, we may be sure, always said his office in the woods.) But evidently he had no particular place in his mind, not even his beloved Portiuncula, for he went first to his friend Guido, Bishop of Assisi, and then to the canons of San Rufino to ask if they could help him. They only answered that they had no church to dispose of, and could offer no advice upon the subject. Then sorrowfully, like a man begging from door to door, St. Francis climbed Mount Subasio to lay his request in piteous terms before the benedictine abbot, where he met with more success. Brother Leo tells us that the abbot was "moved to pity, and after taking counsel with his monks, being inspired by divine grace and will, granted unto the Blessed Francis and his brethren the church of St. Mary of the Little Portion, as being the smallest and poorest church they possessed. And the abbot said to the Blessed Francis, 'Behold Brother, we grant what thou desirest. But should the Lord multiply thy brotherhood we will that this place shall be the mother-house of thy Order.'"[55] With a willing heart Francis promised what the abbot asked, and further insisted upon paying rent for the Portiuncula, because he wished his followers always to bear in mind the point of his rule, which he so often dwelt upon, namely, that they owned no property whatever, but were only in this world as pilgrims. So every year two of his brethren brought to the gate of the benedictine monastery a basket full of roach caught in the Chiaggio which flows at no great distance from the Portiuncula, and the abbot, smiling at the simplicity of Francis, who had imagined yet another device for humility, gave back a vessel full of oil in exchange for the gift of fish.[56] With great rejoicing St. Francis set to work building cells of a most simple pattern, with walls of wattle and dab, and thatched with straw, each brother inscribing his name upon a portion of the mud floor set apart for him to rest in. "And no sooner had they come to live here," writes Brother Leo, "than the Lord multiplied their number day by day, and the sweet scent of their good name spread marvellously abroad throughout all the Spoletan valley, and in many parts of the world." It was thus that St. Mary of the Little Portion, henceforth to be the nucleus of the franciscan order, and a place familiar to pilgrims from far and near for many succeeding centuries, came into the keeping of St. Francis in the year 1211, about nine months after Innocent III had sanctioned his work among the people of Italy.