"It has been weeks since your last letter." In truth, Eliza had received one brief letter from him in answer to her rather lengthy epistle describing her new home at Gordon Glen. When her second letter met with no reply, she had refrained from writing a third. "I apologize for that. I was away preaching in the mountains. When I learned I would soon be traveling this way..." He paused self-consciously. "I confess, I am a poor man with a pen. When I read your letters, it is as though you are in the room talking to me. Mine, I fear, are cold and stilted." Eliza couldn't agree with him more, but she was too happy to see him to criticize. "Whatever your reason, I forgive you. You are here now and that is enough." "I couldn't pass this way without calling to see how you were faring." He walked beside her, looking gawky and awkward, all arms and legs. Everything about him was exactly as Eliza remembered, from his thin face and straw-colored hair to his soulfully kind eyes. She found it difficult to believe that nearly three months had passed since last she had seen the young minister.
