The Gentle Rebel Read online

  Greene looked around at the curious faces, then raised his voice, saying, “I don’t know all the right words, but I think I know what a marriage is. The Scripture says that one of the wonders of all this world is ‘the way of a man with a maid.’ Out of the millions of men and women on this globe, one man and one woman come together, and each of them finds something in the other that’s stronger than death! So they become one and are no longer two separate beings.”

  He looked steadily into Nathan’s eyes and asked, “Nathan, does thee love this woman?”

  “Yes!”

  “Will thee forsake all others and love only her as long as thee both shall live?”

  “I—I will!”

  Greene’s voice trembled only slightly as he said, “Julie, does thee love this man?”

  “Yes!”

  “Will thee love only him as long as thee both shall live?”

  Julie looked up into Nathan’s eyes, saw the love that was in him, and she nodded and said, “As long as we live!”

  Then Greene said the words that tied them: “I pronounce thee husband and wife!”

  And as Nathan bent down and kissed her, she clung to him fiercely for one brief moment; then she pulled away and smiled. Sampson climbed into the coach, screaming curses, and the growing crowd swarmed around to stare. But Adam put his arms around Molly and, smiling at her with shining eyes, said, “They’ve got a war to go through, Molly, but they’ve got each other, and they’ve got God!”

  Molly kissed him, and he tasted the salt of tears on her lips, but there was victory in her clear eyes. She looked at Nathan and Julie, and said quietly, “They’ll make it, Adam.”

  And then they moved forward to welcome the newest member of the House of Winslow.

  GILBERT MORRIS spent ten years as a pastor before becoming Professor of English at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas and earning a Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas. A prolific writer, he has had over 25 scholarly articles and 200 poems published in various periodicals, and over the past years has had more than 180 novels published. His family includes three grown children. He and his wife live in Gulf Shores, Alabama.