Assistance came to him from an unexpected quarter. He was to meet the Assembly's Convener and some members of the Committee that evening at Professor Macdougall's for tea. The Superintendent's mind could not be kept long away from the work that was his very life, and at the table the conversation turned to the question of the chronic difficulty of securing men for frontier work, which had become acute in the case of Windermere. Margaret, who had been invited to assist Mrs. Macdougall in the dispensing of her hospitality, was at once on the alert. Why could not Dick be sent? If only that Presbytery difficulty could be got over he might go. That he would be suited for the work she was well assured, and equally certain was she that it would be good for him.
“It would save him,” Margaret said to herself with a sharp sting at her heart, for she had to confess sadly that Dick had come to the point where he needed saving. She had learned from Iola the whole miserable story of Barney's visit, of his terrible indictment of his brother and the final break between them, but she had seen little of him during the past six months. From that terrible night Dick had gone down in physical and in moral health. Again and again he had written Barney, but there had been no reply. Hungrily he had come to Margaret for word of his brother, hopeful of reconciliation. But of late he had given up hope and had ceased to make inquiry, settling down into a state of gloomy, remorseful grief into which Margaret felt she dare not intrude. He occasionally met Iola at society functions, but there was an end of all intimacy between them. His only relief seemed to be in his work, and he gave himself to that with such feverish energy that his health broke down, and under Margaret's persuasion he was now at home with his mother. Thence he had written once to say that his days were one long agony. She remembered one terrible sentence. “Everything here, the house, the mill, my father's fiddle, my mother's churn, the woods, the fields, everything, everything shrieks 'Barney' at me till I am like to go mad. I must get away from here to some place where he has never been with me.”
It required some considerable skill to secure the Superintendent that evening for a few minutes alone. In whatever company he was, he was easily the centre of interest. But Margaret, even in the early days of the Manse, had been a favourite with him, and he was not a man to forget his friends. He had the rare gift of gripping them to him with “hooks of steel.” Hence, he had kept in touch with her during the latter years, pitying the girl's loneliness as much as his admiration for her cheery courage and her determined independence would allow him. When Margaret found her opportunity she wasted no time.
“I have a man for you for Windermere,” were her opening words.
“You have? Where have you got him? Who is he? And are you willing to spare him? Few young ladies are. But you are different from most.” The Superintendent was ever a gallant.
“You remember Mr. Boyle who graduated a year ago?” Her words came hurriedly and there was a slight flush on her cheek. “There was some trouble about his license at Presbytery. That horrid old Mr. Naismith was very nasty, and Dick, Mr. Boyle, I mean—we have always been friends,” she hastened to add, explaining her deepening blush, “you know his mother lived at the Mill near us. Well, since that day in Presbytery he has never been the same. His work—he is on the Daily Telegraph, you know—takes him away from—from—well, from Church and that kind of thing, and from all his friends.”
“I understand,” said the Superintendent, with grave sympathy.
“And he's got to be very different. He had some trouble, great trouble, the greatest possible to him. Oh, I may as well tell you. The brothers—you remember the doctor, Barney?”
“Very well,” replied the Superintendent. “Strong man. Where is he now?”
“He went to Europe. Well, the brothers were everything to each other since little fellows together. Oh, it was beautiful! I never saw anything like it anywhere. They had a misunderstanding, a terrible misunderstanding. Dick was in the wrong.” The Superintendent shot a keen glance at her. “No,” she said, answering his glance, the colour in her face deepening into a vivid scarlet, “it was not about me, not at all. I can't tell you about it, but that, and his trouble with the Presbytery, and all the rest of it are just killing him. And I know if he got back to his own work again and away from home it would save him, and his mother, too, for she is breaking her heart. Couldn't you get him out there?”