The Superintendent saw how hard a task it had been for her to tell the story, and the sight of her eager face, the big blue eyes bright, and the lips quivering with the intensity of her feeling, deeply touched him.
“It might be possible,” he said.
“Oh, I know the Presbytery difficulty,” cried Margaret, with a desperate note in her voice.
“That could be arranged, I have no doubt,” said the Superintendent, brushing aside that difficulty with a wave of the hand. “The question is, would he be willing to go?”
“Oh, he would go, I am sure. If you saw him and if you told him those stories about the need there is, I am sure he would go. Could you see him? There is no use to write. I do wish you could. He is such a fine boy and his mother is so set upon his being a minister.” The blue eyes were bright with tears she was too brave to let fall.
“My dear young lady,” said the Superintendent, his deep voice growing deeper under the intensity of his feelings, “I would do much for your sake and for your mother's. I am to visit your home early next month. I shall make it a point to see Mr. Boyle, and I promise you I shall get him if it is possible.”
The sudden lifting of the burden from her heart deprived the girl of speech, but she shyly put out her hand and touched the long, sinewy fingers that lay within reach of hers in a timid caress. Instantly the fingers closed upon her hand in a grasp so strong that it seemed to drive the conviction into her heart that somehow this strong man would find a way by which Dick could be saved.
How, or by what arguments, the Superintendent overcame Dick's objections, Margaret never learned. But the full bitter tale of reasons against his ever taking up his work again, with which Dick had made himself so familiar during the past dark, dreary months, were one by one removed, and when the Superintendent left the Old Stone Mill he had secured his missionary for Windermere. It gave the Superintendent acute satisfaction to remember the flash of his missionary's blue eyes as, in answer to the warning, “You will have a hard fight of it, remember,” the reply came, “A hard fight? Thank God!”
Before the year was over it fell that the Windermere valley came to be one of the mission fields that gladdened the hearts of the Home Mission Committee of the Calgary Presbytery, and especially of its doughty Convener. In the Convener's study, eight by ten, the report from the Windermere field was discussed with the ubiquitous and indefatigable Superintendent.
“An extremely gratifying record,” said the Superintendent, “especially when one considers its disorganized condition a year ago.”