第56章

"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?"

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."

"Yes, it's a good report," assented the Convener. "We had practically no support a year ago. Our strongest man--"

"Fink?"

"Yes. You know Hank, I see. Well, Hank's enthusiasm and devotion were hardly of what you would call the purest type. But whatever his motive, he stood by the missionary, and, do you know, it is a splendid testimony of the power of the Gospel to see the change in that same shrewd old sinner. Yes, sir, give the Gospel a chance and it will do its work." The Convener, who hated all cant and canting phrases with a perfect hatred, rarely allowed himself the luxury of an emotional outbreak. But the case of Hank Fink seemed to reach the springs of feeling that he kept hidden in the deep heart of him.

"So Boyle has done well?" said the Superintendent. "I am very glad of it. Very glad of it, for his own sake, for his mother's, and for the sake of another."

"Yes," replied the Convener, "Boyle has done a fine bit of work.

He lived all summer on his horse's back and in his canoe, followed the prospectors up into the gulches and the miners to their mines, if you can call them mines, left a magazine here, a book there, a New Testament next place. And once he got his grip on a man, he never let him go. Hank told me how he found a man sick in a camp away up in a gulch and how he stayed with him for more than a week, then brought him down on his horse's back to the Forks. Yes, it's a good record. A church built at the north end of the field, another almost completed at the Forks. Really, it was very fine," continued the Convener, allowing his enthusiasm to rise. "It renews one's faith in the reality of religion to see a man jump into his work like that. They didn't pay him his salary the first half year, but he omitted to mention that in his report."

The Superintendent sat up straight. "Is he behind yet?"

"No. I mentioned the matter to Fink and explained that if the field failed it was Boyle that would suffer. His language--well," the Convener laughed reminiscently, "you have seen Hank?"

"Yes. I've seen him, I've heard him, and I've read him. But let us hope that his deeds will atone in a measure for his broken English. But," continued the Superintendent, "you have had Boyle ordained, have you not?"