River of Mercy Read Online Free

he couldn’t stop thinking about her either, no more than he could stop loving her. And he couldn’t quite bring himself to give up entirely on the hope that they might still have a future. Folly though it might be, a part of him deep within still clung to the hope that a new bishop would eventually be chosen for the Riverhaven Amish, and a new bishop could make all the difference for him and Rachel.
    Recently it had come to light that their current bishop, the elderly Isaac Graber, would be retiring. Apparently his mind was going bad, and he also had a number of physical problems related to a long battle with diabetes. As Rachel had briefly explained the day of her mother’s wedding to Doc Sebastian, a new bishop would eventually be chosen by lot from among their own.
    Bishop Graber had refused to allow Gant to convert to the Amish church and marry Rachel, but Gant hoped that a new bishop might be more open-minded. Of the three men eligible to be included in the lot, Abe Gingerich or Malachi Esch might reconsider Bishop Graber’s decision. Unfortunately, there was another man who might be considered for the position of bishop.
    A man who had pursued Rachel for years with the intention of marrying her. A man who seemed to have appointed himself Gant’s personal nemesis. A man who would take great delight in making certain that Gant and Rachel would never be free to wed.
    If Samuel Beiler should be chosen as the next bishop, any hope Gant might ever have had for a future with Rachel would be forever lost.

3
A W OMAN G ROWN
    Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,
But tares, self-sown, have overtopp’d the wheat.
    A UBREY T HOMAS DE V ERE
    T uesday was Gideon Kanagy’s usual day off from the carpentry shop. Typically, it was also the day he spent working at the family farm—the farm that would be his whenever he wanted it.
    If he ever wanted it. As the only son of a deceased father, he became the owner of the farm. Gideon, however, had no intention of settling down to a life of farming for a long time, if ever. So instead of his mother living in the nearby Dawdi Haus —a residence provided by the Amish for their retired parents—she remained in the main house for now while Gideon lived in Riverhaven above the carpentry shop.
    He wasn’t living Amish, and he didn’t know if he ever would again. He sometimes dressed Plain—when he attended an Amish event with his mother, for example—but for the most part he lived Englisch and had for some time.
    Even so, he still spent some of his time at the farm, doing what needed to be done, especially those tasks he thought too demanding for his mother. Today was no exception.
    Although his recently married mother and Doc Sebastian had been in Baltimore paying a visit to Doc’s son, they would be returning by train tomorrow. Gideon wanted to have the house in good condition when they arrived. He had spent the better part of the day doing inside work. He did his best to keep the house and other buildings on the property in good repair on a regular basis, but he’d still found a number of jobs that needed doing: patching here and painting there, fixing the stubborn handle on the pump in the kitchen, securing the threshold at the back door, and a few other things. He planned to spend the night in order to keep the fires going so the house would be toasty warm for Mamm and Doc the next day.
    By two o’clock he’d managed to finish up most of what he had hoped to accomplish and was headed back toward Riverhaven in the shop wagon Captain Gant had let him use for the day. He wanted to stock up on some supplies for his mamm and Doc so they could enjoy their return home without having to make a trip into town right away.
    The day before had brought sleet and wet snow to the area, which then turned sloppy and slippery, freezing overnight to leave a coating of ice on top. The road was treacherous in places, so he let