Love's Reckoning

Tears glinted in her eyes. "I want no secrets between us, Silas." "No secrets," he echoed, his mouth near the gentle curve of her ear. "Then you should know I can hardly breathe for thinking of you. You're the most maddening lass I've ever known, and every day without you near is an agony to me." Taking her face between his hands, he moved to kiss her, but the sound of approaching horses gave him pause.

That she was thirsty for heavenly things, there could be no doubt.

I'd rather wear out than rust out," he'd once said years before, echoing the words of the evangelist George Whitefield.

Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen. Samuel Johnson

Gardening is the purest human pleasure. Francis Bacon

His fiddle weeps, she thought, yet it wooed her with its sweetness, warm as a lover’s touch.

She’d already memorized the short Psalm and was hungry for more. Indeed, each word seemed woven into her soul the way the weaver wove his wares, taking the barest threads of her faith and making something beautiful and enduring as fine cloth deep inside her.

Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul. Benjamin Franklin

Haste and panic were poor traveling companions, and this trip he'd reaped the consequences in spades.

Distance lends enchantment to the view. English proverb

Are there any churches in the wilderness?” “Aye, the one I’ll build you.” His gaze held hers thoughtfully. “Christ’s kingdom has no frontier, ye ken.