After her mother left them, Dorothy, the aristocrat, talked with John, the newly-ordained circuit rider preacher about their marriage. John said: “I wish to impress upon you that I am a tramp preacher, a calling which in this new country, forces me to tramp long distances by forest trails from one settlement to another and to be from home weeks at a time.” Nor did Dorothy count such marriage a sacrifice, as after he left, with eyes overflowing with tears of happiness, she thanked God that He had given her John.
They agreed that they would marry as soon as his territory had been assigned by the Presbytery; in the meanwhile he was to go home and help with the harvest.
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Mid-afternoon of the tenth of June, John, laying aside his cradle, sickle in hand was gleaning the last of the wheat about the fence corners and stumps of the two-acre [pg 248] field. It is the first they have grown since leaving Virginia. He planted it the October before, thinking of his wife to be and his mother.
Corn pone bread, baked in the Dutch oven, heated by being buried in the red hot coals of the great fireplace was all right for the Colonel and himself, in fact, they preferred it; but Dorothy and his mother should have wheaten bread, which could now be ground and bolted at the water mill at Cumberland Falls.
As almost in tenderness he bound and knotted the last bundle, some one near called.
“John! John!”
Thrilled, he turned, Dorothy stood before him—and he caught her and held her in his arms.
“Father Rice and mother are at the house. You have been assigned to this district, in which you are to live and establish new churches. It is nearly a hundred miles square; there is only one church and you are the only preacher. You are to begin work on the first of July; and so to be with you the longer before you leave, I have come to you, John. Father Rice and mother thought I should do this. We shall live here as it is near the center of your district. He has all the papers ready and must go on at once to Powell’s Valley, where he preaches tonight. Kiss me as much as you wish, but hurry, John. He is waiting to marry us; if you are not ready, he can do it when he returns in about a week—I thought that would hurry you a bit.”
John, absent-minded in his happiness, picked up the sickle, and carrying it in his left hand, with his right arm around Dorothy’s waist, hastened towards the house. There, after greetings, and without further preparation on John’s part, other than removing his hat, they were married.