Ray read this letter over a dozen times. He had anxiously awaited it, fearing Daisy might shrink from the work he had chosen; instead, she assured him she had been praying it might be his choice. Even Mrs. Lawton had declared she too could make the sacrifice it involved for Christ's sake. Was ever duty plainer; or could the obstacles that appeared to be in the way be more thoroughly removed?
"When they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away—for it was very great," he murmured. "There is nothing now in the way of our honoring Jesus. May the honor we bestow be worthy not of a dead, but a risen Lord."
He now wrote to the Executive Board of Foreign Missions, offering himself for any old field where they might need a laborer, or any new field they might feel called to open. "My choice would be," he wrote, "to go where the gospel is most needed, and the young lady who will go with me as my wife has the same desire. I can be ready to go out the coming fall, or sooner, if you prefer."
Before the close of the seminary term he received the answer of the board. It gratefully accepted his offer, and named him for a field where work had long been begun, but with little result, and where a teeming population of millions was crying out for the Bread of Life.
"I will now write Daisy," he said, on reading the letter, "to prepare herself for our immediate marriage. Together we will study the language of this people, and in October sail for our designated field for hard, but I trust, fruitful toil. Thank God, our life's work is found at last."
But he never wrote that letter. Two hours later Edward entered the room hastily, bearing the following telegram:
Edward and Ray come at once. Mother is very ill.
Daisy.
With little knowledge of the dark shadow falling over him, or of the great struggle for God and for duty that was before him, Ray, with Edward, took that night's express for Afton.