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+Project Gutenberg's The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, by H. B. Wright
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+Title: The Re-Creation of Brian Kent
+
+Author: Harold Bell Wright
+
+Release Date: June, 2002  [Etext #3265]
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+Project Gutenberg's The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, by H. B. Wright
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+
+THE RE-CREATION OF BRIAN KENT
+
+by HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
+
+
+
+
+DEAR AUNTIE SUE:
+
+I have wondered many times, while writing this simple story of life
+and love, if you would ever forgive me for putting you in a book.
+I hope you will, because if you do not, I shall be heartbroken, and
+you wouldn't want me that way, would you, Auntie Sue?
+
+I fancy I can hear you say:  "But, Harold, how COULD you!  You know
+I never did the things you have made me do in your story.  You know
+I never lived in a little log house by the river in the Ozark
+Mountains!  What in the world will people think!"
+
+Well, to tell the truth, dear, I don't care so very much what
+people think if only they will love you; and that they are sure to
+do, because,--well, just because--  You must remember, too, that
+you will be eighty-seven years old the eighteenth of next November,
+and it is therefore quite time that someone put you in a book.
+
+And, after all, Auntie Sue, are you very sure that you have never
+lived in a little log house by the river,--are you very sure,
+Auntie Sue?
+
+Forgive my impertinence, as you have always forgiven me everything;
+and love me just the same, because I have written only in love of
+the dearest Auntie Sue in the world!
+
+Signature  [Harold]
+
+The Glenwood Mission Inn,
+Riverside, California,
+April 30, 1919.
+
+
+
+"And see the rivers, how they run
+Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
+Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,--
+Wave succeeding wave, they go
+A various journey to the deep
+Like human life to endless sleep!"
+
+John Dyer--"Grongar Hill."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.  A REMARKABLE WOMAN
+
+II.  THE MAN IN THE DARK
+
+III.  A MISSING LETTER
+
+IV.  THE WILL OF THE RIVER
+
+V.  AUNTIE SUE RECOGNIZES A GENTLEMAN
+
+VI.  IN THE LOG HOUSE BY THE RIVER
+
+VII.  OFFICERS OF THE LAW
+
+VIII.  THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN THE LAW
+
+IX.  AUNTIE SUE'S PROPOSITION
+
+X.  BRIAN KENT DECIDES
+
+XI.  RE-CREATION
+
+XII.  AUNTIE SUE TAKES A CHANCE
+
+XIII.  JUDY TO THE RESCUE
+
+XIV.  BETTY JO CONSIDERS
+
+XV.  A MATTER OF BUSINESS
+
+XVI.  THE SECRET OF AUNTIE SUE'S LIFE
+
+XVII.  AN AWKWARD SITUATION
+
+XVIII.  BETTY JO FACES HERSELF
+
+XIX.  JUDY'S CONFESSION
+
+XX.  BRIAN AND BETTY JO KEEP HOUSE
+
+XXI.  THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW
+
+XXII.  AT THE EMPIRE CONSOLIDATED SAVINGS BANK
+
+XXIII.  IN THE ELBOW ROCK RAPIDS
+
+XXIV.  JUDY'S RETURN
+
+XXV.  THE RIVER
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+BETTY JO
+
+"LOOK, JUDY! LOOK!
+
+AUNTIE SUE SAID, SOFTLY, "SHE DID NOT UNDERSTAND, BRIAN"
+
+* * * SHE MADE THE LITTLE BOOK OF PAINFUL MEMORIES A BOOK OF JOYOUS
+PROMISE
+
+
+
+THE RE-CREATION OF BRIAN KENT
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A REMARKABLE WOMAN.
+
+
+I remember as well as though it were yesterday the first time I met
+Auntie Sue.
+
+It happened during my first roaming visit to the Ozarks, when I had
+wandered by chance, one day, into the Elbow Rock neighborhood.
+Twenty years it was, at least, before the time of this story.  She
+was standing in the door of her little schoolhouse, the ruins of
+which you may still see, halfway up the long hill from the log
+house by the river, where the most of this story was lived.
+
+It was that season of the year when the gold and brown of our Ozark
+Hills is overlaid with a filmy veil of delicate blue haze and the
+world is hushed with the solemn sweetness of the passing of the
+summer.  And as the old gentlewoman stood there in the open door of
+that rustic temple of learning, with the deep-shadowed, wooded
+hillside in the background, and, in front, the rude clearing with
+its crooked rail fence along which the scarlet sumac flamed, I
+thought,--as I still think, after all these years,--that I had
+never before seen such a woman.
+
+Fifty years had gone into the making of that sterling character
+which was builded upon a foundation of many generations of noble
+ancestors.  Without home or children of her own, the life strength
+of her splendid womanhood had been given to the teaching of boys
+and girls.  An old-maid schoolteacher?  Yes,--if you will.  But, as
+I saw her standing there that day,--tall and slender, dressed in a
+simple gown that was fitting to her work,--there was a queenly
+dignity, a stately sweetness, in her bearing that made me feel,
+somehow, as if I had come unexpectedly into the presence of
+royalty.  Not the royalty of caste and court and station with their
+glittering pretenses of superiority and their superficial claims to
+distinction,--I do not mean that; I mean that true royalty which
+needs no caste or court or station but makes itself felt because
+it IS.
+
+She did not notice me at first, for the noise of the children at
+play in the yard covered the sound of my approach, and she was
+looking far, far away, over the river which lay below at the foot
+of the hill; over the forest-clad mountains in the glory of their
+brown and gold; over the vast sweep of the tree-crowned Ozark
+ridges that receded wave after wave into the blue haze until, in
+the vastness of the distant sky, they were lost.  And something
+made me know that, in the moment's respite from her task, the woman
+was looking even beyond the sky itself.
+
+Her profile, clean-chiselled, but daintily formed, was beautiful in
+its gentle strength.  Her hair was soft and silvery like the gray
+mist of the river in the morning.  Then she turned to greet me, and
+I saw her eyes.  Boy that I was then, and not given overmuch to
+serious thought, I knew that the high, unwavering purpose, the
+loving sympathy, and tender understanding that shone in the calm
+depth of those eyes could belong only to one who habitually looks
+unafraid beyond all earthly scenes.  Only those who have learned
+thus to look beyond the material horizon of our little day have
+that beautiful inner light which shone in the eyes of Auntie Sue--
+the teacher of a backwoods school.
+
+Auntie Sue had come to the Elbow Rock neighborhood the summer
+preceding that fall when I first met her.  She had grown too old,
+she said, with her delightful little laugh, to be of much use in
+the larger schools of the more thickly populated sections of the
+country.  But she was still far too young, she stoutly maintained,
+to be altogether useless.
+
+Tom Warden, who lived just over the ridge from the schoolhouse, and
+who was blessed with the largest wife, the largest family, and the
+most pretentious farm in the county, had kinsfolk somewhere in
+Illinois.  Through these relatives of the Ozark farmer Miss Susan
+Wakefield had learned of the needs of the Elbow Rock school, and
+so, finally, had come into the hills.  It was the influential Tom
+who secured for her the modest position.  It was the motherly Mrs.
+Tom who made her at home in the Warden household.  It was the
+Warden boys and girls who first called her "Auntie Sue."  But it
+was Auntie Sue herself who won so large a place in the hearts of
+the simple mountain folk of the district that she held her position
+year after year, until she finally gave up teaching altogether.
+
+Not one of her Ozark friends ever came to know in detail the
+history of this remarkable woman's life.  It was known in a general
+way that she was born in Connecticut; that she had a brother
+somewhere in some South-American country; that two other brothers
+had been killed in the Civil War; that she had taught in the lower
+and intermediate grades of public schools in various places all the
+years of her womanhood.  Also, it was known that she had never
+married.
+
+"And that," said Uncle Lige Potter, voicing the unanimous opinion,
+of the countryside, "is a doggone funny thing and plumb unnatural,
+considerin' the kind of woman she is."
+
+To which Lem Jordan,--who was then living with his fourth wife, and
+might therefore be held to speak with a degree of authority,--
+added:  "Hit sure is a dad burned shame, an' a plumb disgrace to
+the men of this here country, when you come to look at the sort of
+wimmen most of 'em are a marryin' most of the time."
+
+Another matter of universal and never-failing interest to the
+mountain folk was the unprecedented number of letters that Auntie
+Sue received and wrote.  That some of these letters written by
+their backwoods teacher were addressed to men and women of such
+prominence in the world that their names were known even to that
+remote Ozark district was a source of no little pride to Auntie
+Sue's immediate neighbors, and served to mark her in their eyes
+with no small distinction.
+
+It was during the fourth year of her life amid the scenes of this
+story,--as I recall time,--that Auntie Sue invested the small
+savings of her working years in the little log house by the river
+and the eighty acres of land known as the "Old Bill Wilson place."
+
+The house was a substantial building of three rooms, a lean-to
+kitchen, and a porch overlooking the river.  The log barn, with
+"Prince," a gentle old horse, and "Bess," a mild-mannered, brindle
+cow, completed the modest establishment.  About thirty acres of the
+land were cleared and under cultivation of a sort.  The remaining
+acreage was in timber.  The price, under the kindly and expert
+supervision of Tom Warden, was fifteen dollars an acre.  But Auntie
+Sue always laughingly insisted that she really paid fifty cents an
+acre for the land and fourteen dollars and a half an acre for the
+sunsets.
+
+The tillable land, except for the garden, she "let out on shares,"
+always under the friendly guardianship of neighbor Tom; while Tom's
+boys cared for the little garden in season, and saw to it that the
+woodpile was always ample and ready for the stove.  And, in
+addition to these fixed and regular homely services, there were
+many offerings of helpful hands whenever other needs arose; for, as
+time passed, there came to be in all the Elbow Rock district scarce
+a man, young or old, who did not now and then honor himself by doing
+some little job for Auntie Sue; while the women and girls, in the
+same neighborly spirit, brought from their own humble households
+many tokens of their loving thoughtfulness.  And never did one visit
+that little log house by the river without the consciousness of
+something received from the silvery-haired old teacher--a something
+intangible, perhaps, which they could not have expressed in words,
+but which, nevertheless, enriched the lives of those simple mountain
+people with a very real joy and a very tangible happiness.
+
+For six years, Auntie Sue continued teaching the Elbow Rock
+school;--climbing the hill in the morning from her log house by the
+river to the cabin schoolhouse in the clearing on the mountain-side
+above; returning in the late afternoon, when her day's work was
+over, down the winding road to her little home, there to watch,
+from the porch that overlooked the river, the sunset in the
+evening.  And every year the daily climb grew a little harder; the
+days of work grew a little longer; she went down the hill in the
+afternoon a little slower.  And every year the sunsets were to her
+eyes more beautiful; the evening skies to her understanding glowed
+with richer meaning; the twilight hours filled her heart with a
+deeper peace.
+
+And so, at last, her teaching days were over; that is, she taught
+no more in the log schoolhouse in the clearing on the mountain-
+side.  But in her little home beside the river she continued her
+work; not from text-books, indeed, but as all such souls must
+continue to teach, until the sun sets for the last time upon their
+mortal days.
+
+Work-worn, toil-hardened mountaineer mothers, whose narrow world
+denied them so many of the finer thoughts and things, came to
+counsel with this childless woman, and to learn from her a little
+of the art of contentment and happiness.  Strong men, of rude dress
+and speech, whose lives were as rough as the hills in which they
+were reared, and whose thoughts were often as crude as their half-
+savage and sometimes lawless customs, came to sit at the feet of
+this gentle one, who received them all with such kindly interest
+and instinctive understanding.  And young men and girls came, drawn
+by the magic that was hers, to confide in this woman who listened
+with such rare tact and loving sympathy to their troubles and their
+dreams, and who, in the deepest things of their young lives, was
+mother to them all.
+
+Nor were the mountain folk her only disciples.  Always there were
+the letters she continued to write, addressed to almost every
+corner of the land.  And every year there would come, for a week or
+a month, at different times during the summer, men and women from
+the great world of larger affairs who had need of the strength and
+courage and patience and hope they never failed to find in that
+little log house by the river.  And so, in time, it came to be
+known that those letters written by Auntie Sue went to men and
+women who, in their childhood school days, had received from her
+their first lessons in writing; and that her visitors, many of them
+distinguished in the world of railroads and cities, were of that
+large circle of busy souls who had never ceased to be her pupils.
+
+Thus it came that the garden was made a little larger, and two
+rooms were added to the house, with other modest improvements, to
+accommodate Auntie Sue's grown-up boys and girls when they came to
+visit her.  But never was there a hired servant, so that her guests
+must do their own household tasks, because, Auntie Sue said, that
+was good for them and mostly what they needed.
+
+It should also be said here that among her many pupils who lived
+beyond the sky-line of the far, blue hills, not one knew more of
+the real secret of Auntie Sue's life and character than did the
+Ozark mountaineers of the Elbow Rock district, among whom she had
+chosen to pass the evening of her day.
+
+Then came one who learned the secret.  He learned--but that is my
+story.  I must not tell the secret here.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE MAN IN THE DARK.
+
+
+A man stood at a window, looking out into the night.  There was no
+light in the room.  The stars were hidden behind a thick curtain of
+sullen clouds.
+
+The house was a wretchedly constructed, long-neglected building of
+a type common to those old river towns that in their many years of
+uselessness have lost all civic pride, and in their own resultant
+squalor and filth have buried their self-respect.  A dingy,
+scarcely legible sign over the treacherous board walk, in front, by
+the sickly light of a smoke-grimed kerosene lantern, announced that
+the place was a hotel.
+
+Dark as it was, the man at the window could see the river.  The
+trees that lined the bank opposite the town were mere ghostly
+shadows against the gloomy masses of the low hills that rose from
+the water's edge, indistinct, mysterious, and unreal, into the
+threatening sky.  The higher mountains that reared their crests
+beyond the hills were invisible.  The stream itself swept sullenly
+through the night,--a resistless flood of dismal power, as if,
+turbid with wrecked souls, with the lost hopes and ruined dreams
+of men, it was fit only to bear vessels freighted with sorrow,
+misfortune, and despair.
+
+The manner of the man at the window was as if some woeful spirit of
+the melancholy scene were calling him.  With head bowed, and face
+turned a little to one side, he listened intently as one listens to
+voices that are muffled and indistinct.  He pressed his face close
+to the glass, and with straining eyes tried to see more clearly the
+ghostly trees, the sombre hills, and the gloomy river.  Three times
+he turned from the window to pace to and fro in the darkened room,
+and every time his steps brought him again to the casement, as if
+in obedience to some insistent voice that summoned him.  The fourth
+time, he turned from the window more quickly, with a gesture of
+assenting decision.
+
+The crackling snap of a match broke the dead stillness.  The sudden
+flare of light stabbed the darkness.  As he applied the tiny,
+wavering flame to the wick of a lamp that stood on the cheap, old-
+fashioned bureau, the man's hand shook until the chimney rattled
+against the wire standards of the burner.  Turning quickly from the
+lighted lamp, the man sprang again to the window to jerk down the
+tattered, old shade.  Facing about, he stood with his back to the
+wall, searching the room with wide, fearful eyes.  His fists were
+clenched.  His chest rose and fell heavily with his labored
+breathing.  His face worked with emotion.  With trembling limbs and
+twitching muscles, he crouched like some desperate creature at bay.
+
+But, save for the wretched man himself, there was in that shabby,
+dingy-papered, dirty-carpeted, poorly furnished apartment no living
+thing.
+
+Suddenly, the man laughed;--and it was the reckless, despairing
+laughter of a soul that feels itself slipping over the brink of an
+abyss.
+
+With hurried step and outstretched hands, he crossed the room to
+snatch a bottle of whisky from its place beside the lamp on the
+bureau.  With trembling eagerness, he poured a water tumbler half-
+full of the red liquor.  As one dying of thirst, he drank.  Drawing
+a deep breath, and shaking his head with a wry smile, he spoke in
+hoarse confidence to the image of himself in the dingy mirror:
+"They nearly had me, that time."  Again, he poured, and drank.
+
+The whisky steadied him for the moment, and with bottle and glass
+still in hand, he regarded himself in the mirror with critical
+interest.
+
+Had he stood erect, with the vigor that should have been his by
+right of his years, the man would have measured just short of six
+feet; but his shoulders--naturally well set--sagged with the
+weariness of excessive physical indulgence; while the sunken chest,
+the emaciated limbs, and the dejected posture of his misused body
+made him in appearance, at least, a wretched weakling.  His
+clothing--of good material and well tailored--was disgustingly
+soiled and neglected;--the shoes thickly coated with dried mud, and
+the once-white shirt, slovenly unfastened at the throat, without
+collar or tie.  The face which looked back from the mirror to the
+man was, without question, the countenance of a gentleman; but the
+broad forehead under the unkempt red-brown hair was furrowed with
+anxiety; the unshaven cheeks were lined and sunken; the finely
+shaped, sensitive mouth drooped with nervous weakness; and the
+blue, well-placed eyes were bloodshot and glittering with the light
+of near-insanity.
+
+The poor creature looked at the hideous image of his ruined self as
+if fascinated with the horror of that which had been somehow
+wrought.  Slowly, as one in a trance, he went closer, and, without
+moving his gaze from the mirror, placed the bottle and tumbler upon
+the bureau.  As if compelled by those burning eyes that stared so
+fixedly at him, he leaned forward still closer to the glass.  Then,
+as he looked, the distorted features twitched and worked grotesquely
+with uncontrollable emotions, while the quivering lips formed words
+that were not even whispered.  With trembling fingers he felt the
+unshaven cheeks and touched the unkempt hair questioningly.
+Suddenly, as if to shut out the horror of that which he saw in the
+mirror, the man hid his face in his hands, and with a sobbing,
+inarticulate cry sank to the floor.
+
+Silently, with pitiless force, the river swept onward through the
+night, following its ordained way to the mighty sea.
+
+As if summoned again by some dark spirit that brooded over the
+sombre, rushing flood, the man rose heavily to his feet.  His face
+turned once more toward the window.  A moment he stood there,
+listening, listening; then wheeling back to the whisky bottle and
+the glass on the bureau, he quickly poured, and drank again.
+
+Nodding his head in the manner of one reaching a conclusion, he
+looked slowly about the room, while a frightful grin of hopeless,
+despairing triumph twisted his features, and his lips moved as if
+he breathed reckless defiance to an invisible ghostly company.
+
+Moving, now, with a decision and purpose that suggested a native
+strength of character, the man quickly packed a suit-case with
+various articles of clothing from the bureau drawers and the
+closet.  He was in the act of closing the suit-case when he stopped
+suddenly, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, turned away.  Then,
+as if struck by another thought, he stooped again over his baggage,
+and drew forth a fresh, untouched bottle of whisky.
+
+"I guess you are the only baggage I'll need where I am going," he
+said, whimsically; and, leaving the open suit-case where it lay, he
+crossed the room, and extinguished the light.  Cautiously, he
+unlocked and opened the door.  For a moment, he stood listening.
+Then, with the bottle hidden under his coat, he stole softly from
+the room.
+
+A few minutes later, the man stood out there in the night, on the
+bank of the river.  Behind him the outlines of the scattered houses
+that made the little town were lost against the dusk of the
+hillside.  From the ghostly tree-shadows that marked the opposite
+bank, the solemn hills rose out of the deeper darkness of the
+lowlands that edged the stream in sombre mystery.  There was no
+break in the heavy clouds to permit the gleam of a friendly star.
+There was no sound save the soft swish of the water against the
+bank where he stood, the chirping of a bird in the near-by willows,
+and the occasional splash of a leaping fish or water animal.  But
+to the man there was a feeling of sound.  To the lonely human wreck
+standing there in the darkness, the river called--called with
+fearful, insistent power.
+
+From under the black wall of the night the dreadful flood swept out
+of the Somewhere of its beginning.  Past the man the river poured
+its mighty strength with resistless, smoothly flowing, terrible
+force.  Into the darkness it swept on its awful way to the Nowhere
+of its ending.  For uncounted ages, the river had poured itself
+thus between those walls of hills.  For untold ages to come, until
+the end of time itself, the stream would continue to pour its
+strength past that spot where the man stood.
+
+Out of the night, the voice of the river had called to the man, as
+he stood at the window of his darkened room.  And the man had come,
+now, to answer the call.  Cautiously, he went down the bank toward
+the edge of the dark, swirling water.  His purpose was unmistakable.
+Nor was there any hint of faltering, now, in his manner.  He had
+reached his decision.  He knew what he had come to do.
+
+The man's feet were feeling the mud at the margin of the stream
+when his legs touched something, and a low, rattling sound startled
+him.  Then he remembered.  A skiff was moored there, and he had
+brushed against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the
+stump of a willow higher up on the bank.  The man had seen the
+skiff,--a rude, flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark
+natives as a John-boat,--just before sunset that evening.  But
+there had been no boat in his thoughts when he had come to answer
+the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of his mind, as he
+stood there in the night beside the stream, he had not noticed it,
+as it lay so nearly invisible in the darkness.  Mechanically, he
+stooped to feel the chain with his free hand.  A moment later, he
+had placed his bottle of whisky carefully in the boat, and was
+loosing the chain painter from the willow stump.
+
+"Why not?" he said to himself.  "It will be easier in midstream,--
+and more certain."
+
+Carefully, so that no sound should break the stillness, he stowed
+the chain in the bow, and then worked the skiff around until it
+pointed out into the stream.  Then, with his hands grasping the
+sides of the little craft, and the weight of his body on one knee
+in the stern, he pushed vigorously with his free foot against the
+bank and so was carried well out from the shore.  As the boat lost
+its momentum, the strong current caught it and whirled it away down
+the river.
+
+Groping in the darkness, the man found his bottle of whisky, and
+working the cork out with his pocketknife, drank long and deep.
+
+Already, save for a single light, the town was lost in the night.
+As the man watched that red spot on the black wall, the stream
+swung his drifting boat around a bend, and the light vanished.  The
+dreadful mystery of the river drew close.  The world of men was
+far, very far away.  Centuries ago, the man had faced himself in
+the mirror, and had obeyed the voice that summoned him into the
+darkness.  In fancy, now, he saw his empty boat swept on and on.
+Through what varied scenes would it drift?  To what port would the
+mysterious will of the river carry it?  To what end would it at
+last come in its helplessness?
+
+And the man himself,--the human soul-craft,--what of him?  As he
+had pushed his material boat out into the stream to drift, unguided
+and helpless, so, presently, he would push himself out from the
+shore of all that men call life.  Through what scenes would he
+drift?  To what port would the will of an awful invisible stream
+carry him?  To what end would he finally come, in his helplessness?
+
+Again the man drank--and again.
+
+And then, with face upturned to the leaden clouds, he laughed
+aloud--laughed until the ghostly shores gave back his laughter, and
+the voices of the night were hushed and still.
+
+The laughter ended with a wild, reckless, defiant yell.
+
+Springing to his feet in the drifting boat, the man shook his
+clenched fist at the darkness, and with insane fury cursed the life
+he had left behind.
+
+The current whirled the boat around, and the man faced down the
+stream.  He laughed again; and, lifting his bottle high, uttered a
+reckless, profane toast to the unknown toward which he was being
+carried by the river in the night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A MISSING LETTER.
+
+
+Auntie Sue's little log house by the river was placed some five
+hundred yards back from the stream, on a bench of land at the foot
+of Schoolhouse Hill.  From this bench, the ground slopes gently to
+the river-bank, which, at this point, is sheer and high enough to
+be well above the water at flood periods.  The road, winding down
+the hill, turns to the right at the foot of the steep grade, and
+leads away up the river; and between the road and the river, on the
+up-stream side of the house, was the garden.
+
+At the lower corner of the garden, farthest from the house, the
+strong current had cut a deep inward curve in the high shore-line,
+forming thus an eddy, which was margined on one side, at a normal
+stage of water, by a narrow shelf of land between the water's edge
+and the foot of the main bank.  A flight of rude steps led down
+from the garden above to this natural landing, which, for three
+miles up and down the river, was the only point, on Auntie Sue's
+side of the stream, where one could go ashore from a skiff.
+
+From the porch of the house, one, facing up the river, looked over
+the gently sloping garden, over the eddy lying under the high bank,
+and away over a beautiful reach of water known as The Bend,--a
+wide, sweeping curve which, a mile distant, is lost behind a wooded
+bluff where, at times, during the vacation or hunting season, one
+might see the smoke from the stone chimney of a clubhouse which was
+built and used by people who lived in the big, noisy city many
+miles from the peaceful Ozark scene.  From the shore of The Bend,
+opposite and above Auntie Sue's place, beyond the willows that
+fringe the water's edge, the low bottom-lands extend back three-
+quarters of a mile to the foot of a heavily timbered ridge, beyond
+which rise the higher hills.  But directly across from Auntie Sue's
+house, this ridge curves sharply toward the stream; while less than
+a quarter of a mile below, a mighty mountain-arm is thrust out from
+a shoulder of Schoolhouse Hill, as if to bar the river's way.  The
+high bluff thus formed is known to the natives throughout all that
+region as Elbow Rock.
+
+The quiet waters of The Bend move so gently on their broad course
+that from the porch, looking up the stream, the eye could scarcely
+mark the current.  But in front of the little log house, where the
+restraining banks of the river draw closer together, the lazy
+current awakens to quickening movement.  Looking down the stream,
+one could see the waters leaving the broad and quiet reaches of The
+Bend above and rushing away with fast increasing speed between the
+narrowing banks until, in all their vicious might, they dashed full
+against the Elbow Rock cliff, where, boiling and tossing in mad
+fury, they roared away at a right angle and so around the point and
+on to another quiet stretch below.  And many were the tales of
+stirring adventure and tragic accident at this dangerous point of
+the river's journey to the far-away sea.  Skilled rivermen, by
+holding their John-boats and canoes close to the far shore, might
+run the rapids with safety.  But no boat, once caught in the
+vicious grip of the main current between the comparatively still
+waters of The Bend and that wild, roaring tumult at Elbow Rock, had
+ever survived.
+
+It was nearing the close of a late summer day, and Auntie Sue, as
+was her custom, stood on the porch watching the sunset.  In the
+vast field of sky that arched above the softly rounded hills there
+was not a cloud.  No wind stirred the leaves of the far-reaching
+forests, or marred the bright waters of the quiet Bend that
+mirrored back the green, tree-fringed banks and blue-shadowed
+mountains.  Faintly, through the hush, from beyond the bottom-lands
+on the other side of the stream, came the long-drawn "Wh-o-e-e!
+Wh-o-e-e!" of farmer Jackson calling his hogs.  From the hillside,
+back of the house, sounded the deep, mellow tones of a cowbell,
+telling Auntie Sue that neighbor Tom's cattle were going home from
+their woodland pastures.  A company of crows crossed the river on
+leisure wing, toward some evening rendezvous.  A waterfowl flapped
+slowly up the stream.  And here and there the swallows wheeled in
+graceful circles above the gleaming Bend, or dipped, flashlike, to
+break the silvery surface.  As the blue of the mountains deepened
+to purple, and the rosy light from below the western hills flushed
+the sky, the silver sheen of the quiet water changed with the
+changing tints above, and the shadows of the trees along the bank
+deepened until the shore-line was lost in the dusk of the coming
+night.
+
+And even as the river gave back the light of the sky and the color
+of the mountains, so the gentle face of the gray-haired woman, who
+watched with such loving reverence, reflected the beauty of the
+scene.  The peace and quiet of the evening of her life was as the
+still loveliness of that twilight hour.
+
+And, yet, there was a suggestion of pathos in the loneliness of the
+slender figure standing there.  Now and again, she clasped her
+delicate hands to her breast as if moved by emotions of a too-
+poignant sweetness, while in her eyes shone the soft light of
+fondest memories and dearest dreams.  Several times she turned her
+head to look about, as if wishing for some one to share with her
+the beauty that moved her so.  At last, she called; and her voice,
+low and pure-toned, had in it the quality that was in the light of
+her eyes.
+
+"Judy! Judy, dear!  Do come and see this wonderful, wonderful sky!"
+
+From within the house, a shrill, querulous, drawling voice, so
+characteristic of the Southern "poor-white" mountaineer, answered:
+"Wha-a-t?"
+
+A quick little smile deepened the crows'-feet at the corners of
+Auntie Sue's eyes, as she called again with gentle patience:  "Do
+come and see the sunset, Judy, dear!  It is so beautiful!"  And,
+this time, in answer, Judy appeared in the doorway.
+
+From appearances, the poor creature's age might have been anywhere
+from fifteen to thirty-five; for the twisted and misshapen body,
+angular and hard; the scrawny, wry neck; the old-young face, thin
+and sallow, with furtive, beady-black eyes, gave no hint of her
+years.  As a matter of fact, I happened to know that Judith Taylor,
+daughter of the notorious Ozark moonshiner, Jap Taylor, was just
+past twenty the year she went to live with Auntie Sue.
+
+Looking obliquely at the old gentlewoman, with a curious expression
+of mingled defiance, suspicion, and affection on her almost vicious
+face, Judy drawled, "Was you-all a-yellin' for me?"
+
+"Yes, Judy; I want you to help me watch the sunset," Auntie Sue
+answered, with bright animation; and, turning, she pointed toward
+the glowing west,--"Look!"
+
+Judy's sly, evasive eyes did not cease to regard the illumined face
+of her old companion as she returned, in her dry, high-pitched
+monotone:  "I don't reckon as how you-all are a-needin' much help,
+seein' as how you are allus a-watchin' hit.  A body'd think you-all
+was mighty nigh old 'nough, by now, ter look at hit alone."
+
+Auntie Sue laughed, a low, musical, chuckling laugh, and, with a
+hint of loving impatience in her gentle voice, replied to Judy's
+observation:  "But, don't you understand, child?  It adds so to
+one's happiness to share lovely scenes like this.  It makes it all
+so much--so much--well,--BIGGER, to have some one enjoy it with
+you.  Come, dear!"  And she held out her hand with a gesture of
+entreaty, and a look of yearning upon her dear old face that no
+human being could have withstood.
+
+Judy, still slyly watchful, went cautiously nearer; and Auntie Sue,
+putting an arm lovingly about the crooked shoulders of the mountain
+girl, pointed again toward the west as she said, in a low voice
+that vibrated with emotion, "Look, Judy!  Look!"
+
+The black eyes shifted, and the old-young, expressionless face
+turned toward the landscape, which lay before them in all its
+wondrous beauty of glowing sky and tinted mountain and gleaming
+river.  And there might have been a faint touch of softness, now,
+in the querulous monotone as Judy said:  "I can't see as how hit
+could be ary bigger.  Hain't ary reason, as I kin see, why hit
+should be ary bigger if hit could.  Lord knows there's 'nough of
+hit as 't is; rough 'nough, too, as you-all 'd sure know if you-all
+had ter trapse over them there hills all yer life like I've had
+ter."
+
+"But, isn't it wonderful to-night, Judy?  It seems to me I have
+never seen it so perfect."
+
+"Hit's just like hit's allus been, so far as I kin see, 'ceptin'
+that the river's higher in the spring an' more muddier," returned
+the mountain girl.  "I was borned over there on yon side that there
+flat-topped mountain, nigh the mouth of Red Creek.  I growed up on
+the river, mostly;--learned ter swim an' paddle er John-boat 'fore
+I kin remember.  Red Creek, hit heads over there behind that there
+long ridge, in Injin Holler.  There's a still--"
+
+She checked herself suddenly, and shot a fearful sidewise look at
+Auntie Sue; then turned and pointed in the opposite direction with
+a pretense of excited interest.  "Look down there, ma'm!  See how
+black the old river is where she smashes inter Elbow Rock, an' how
+white them waves be where the water biles an' throws hitself.
+Hit'd sure git you if you was ter git ketched in there with er
+John-boat, wouldn't hit?  Listen, ma'm!  You kin hear hit a-roarin'
+like hit was mad, can't you?"
+
+But the older woman turned to face, again, the quiet reaches of The
+Bend.
+
+"I think I like The Bend best, though, Judy.  See how perfectly
+those trees and hills are mirrored in the river; and how the water
+holds the color of the sky.  Don't you think God is good to make
+the world so beautiful for us, child?"
+
+"'Beautiful'!" cried poor, deformed Judy, in a voice that shrilled
+in vicious protest.  "If there is a God, like you-all are allus a-
+talkin' 'bout, an' if He sure 'nough made them things, like you-all
+sees 'em, He sure hain't toted fair with me."
+
+"Hush, Judy!" pleaded Auntie Sue.  "Please don't, child!"
+
+But the mountain girl rebelliously continued:  "Look at me!  Just
+look at me!  If that there God of your'n is so all-fired good, what
+did He go an' let my pap git drunk for, an' beat me like he done
+when I was a baby, an' make me grow up all crooked like what I be?
+'Good'?  Hell!  A dad burned ornery kind of a God I call Him!"
+
+For some time, Auntie Sue did not speak, but stood with her face
+upturned to the sky.  Then the low, gentle voice again broke the
+silence:  "See, Judy, dear; the light is almost gone now, and there
+is not a cloud anywhere.  Yesterday evening, you remember, we could
+not see the sunset at all, the clouds were so heavy and solid.  The
+moon will be lovely to-night.  I think I shall wait for it."
+
+"You-all best set down then," said Judy, speaking again in her
+querulous, drawling monotone.  "I'll fetch a chair."  She brought a
+comfortable rustic rocking-chair from the farther end of the porch;
+then disappeared into the house, to return a moment later with a
+heavy shawl.  "Hit'll be a-turnin' cold directly, now the sun's
+plumb down," she said, "an' you-all mustn't get to chillin',
+nohow."
+
+Auntie Sue thanked her with gentle courtesy, and, reaching up,
+caught the girl's hand as Judy was awkwardly arranging the wrap
+about the thin old shoulders.  "Won't you bring a chair for
+yourself, and sit with me awhile, dear?"  As she spoke, Auntie Sue
+patted the hard, bony hand caressingly.
+
+But Judy pulled her hand away roughly, saying:  "You-all ain't got
+no call ter do sich as that ter me.  I'll set awhile with you but I
+ain't a-needin' no chair."  And with that, she seated herself on
+the floor, her back against the wall of the house.
+
+The last of the evening was gone from the sky, now.  The soft
+darkness of a clear, star-light night lay over the land.  A gentle
+breeze stole over the mountains, rustled softly through the forest,
+and, drifting across the river, touched Auntie Sue's silvery hair.
+
+Judy was first to break the silence:  "I took notice neighbor Tom
+brung you-all a right smart bunch of letter mail this evenin'," she
+said, curiously.
+
+There was a troubled note in Auntie Sue's gentle voice as she
+returned, "The letter from the bank did not come, Judy."
+
+"Hit didn't?"
+
+"No; and, Judy, it is nearly four weeks, now, since I sent them
+that money.  I can't understand it."
+
+"I was plumb scared at the time, you oughten ter sent hit just in
+er letter that a-way.  Hit sure looked like a heap of money ter be
+a-trustin' them there ornery post-office fellers with, even if hit
+was funny, new-fangled money like that there was.  Why, ma'm, you
+take old Tod Stimson, down at the Ferry, now, an' that old devil'd
+steal anythin' what warn't too much trouble for him ter lift."
+
+"Argentine notes the money was, Judy.  I felt sure that it would be
+all right because, you know, Brother John sent it just in a letter
+all the way from Buenos Aires.  And, you remember, I folded it up
+in extra heavy paper, and put it in two envelopes, one over the
+other, and mailed it at Thompsonville with my own hands."
+
+"Hit sure looks like hit ought ter be safe er nough, so long as hit
+warn't mailed at the Ferry where old Stimson could git his hands on
+hit," agreed Judy.
+
+Then, after a silence of several minutes, she added, in a more
+reassuring voice:  "I reckon as how hit'll be all right, ma'm.  I
+wouldn't worry myself, if I was you.  That there bank-place, like
+as not, gits er right smart lot of letters, an' hit stands ter
+reason the feller just naturally can't write back ter ev'rybody at
+once."
+
+"Of course," agreed Auntie Sue.  "It is just some delay in their
+acknowledgment, that is all.  Perhaps they are waiting to find out
+if the notes are genuine; or it may be that their letter to me went
+astray, and will have to be returned to them, and then remailed all
+over again.  I feel sure I shall hear from them in a few days."
+
+So they talked until the moon appeared from behind the dark
+mountains that, against her light, were silhouetted on the sky.
+And, as the old gentlewoman watched the queen of the night rising
+higher and higher on her royal course, and saw the dusky landscape
+transformed to a fairy-scene of ethereal loveliness, Auntie Sue
+forgot the letter that had not come.
+
+With the enthusiasm that never failed her, the silvery-haired
+teacher tried to give the backwoods girl a little of her wealth of
+vision.  But though they looked at the same landscape, the eyes of
+twenty could not see that which was so clear to the eyes of
+seventy.  Poor Judy!  The river, sweeping on its winding way
+through the hills, from the springs of its far-away beginnings to
+the ocean of its final endeavor,--in all its varied moods and
+changes,--in all its beauty and its irresistible power,--the river
+could never mean to Judy what it meant to Auntie Sue.
+
+"Hit sure is er fine night for to go 'possum huntin'," said the
+girl, at last, getting to her feet and standing in her twisted
+attitude, with her wry neck holding her head to one side.  "Them
+there Jackson boys'll sure be out."
+
+Auntie Sue laughed her low chuckling laugh.
+
+From the edge of the timber that borders the fields of the bottom-
+lands across the river, came the baying of hounds.  "There they be
+now," said Judy.  "Hear 'em?  The Billingses, 'cross from the
+clubhouse, 'll be out, too, I reckon.  When hit's moonlight,
+they're allus a-huntin' 'possum an' 'coon.  When hit's dark,
+they're out on the river a-giggin' for fish.  Well, I reckon I'll
+be a-goin' in, now, ma'm," she concluded, with a yawn.  "Ain't no
+use in a body stayin' up when there ain't nothin' ter do but ter
+sleep, as I kin see."
+
+With an awkward return to Auntie Sue's "Goodnight and sweet dreams,
+dear," the mountain girl went into the house.
+
+For an hour longer, the old gentlewoman sat on the porch of her
+little log house by the river, looking out over the moonlit scene.
+Nor did she now, as when she had watched the sunset, crave human
+companionship.  In spirit, she was far from all earthly needs or
+cares,--where no troubled thoughts could disturb her serene peace
+and her dearest dreams were real.
+
+The missing letter was forgotten.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WILL OF THE RIVER.
+
+
+Had Auntie Sue remained a few minutes longer on the porch, that
+evening, she might have seen an object drifting down the river, in
+the gentle current of The Bend.
+
+Swinging easily around the curve above the clubhouse, it would not
+have been visible at first, because of the deep shadows of the
+reflected trees and mountains.  But, presently, as it drifted on
+into the broader waters of The Bend, it emerged from the shadows
+into the open moonlit space, and then, to any one watching from the
+porch, the dark object, drawing nearer and nearer in the bright
+moonlight, would have soon shaped itself into a boat--an empty
+boat, the watcher would have said, that had broken from its
+moorings somewhere up the river;--and the watcher would have heard,
+through the still, night air, the dull, heavy roar of the mad
+waters at Elbow Rock.
+
+Drifting thus, helpless in the grip of the main current, the little
+craft apparently was doomed to certain destruction.  Gently, it
+would float on the easy surface of the quiet, moonlit Bend.  In
+front of the house, it would move faster and faster.  Where the
+river narrows, it would be caught as if by mighty hands hidden
+beneath the rushing flood, and dragged onward still faster and
+faster.  About it, the racing waters would leap and boil in their
+furious, headlong career, shaking and tossing the helpless victim
+of their might with a vicious strength from which there would be no
+escape, until, in the climax of the river's madness, the object of
+its angry sport would be dashed against the cliff, and torn, and
+crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the rushing flood
+against that rocky anvil, into a battered and shapeless wreck.
+
+The drifting boat drew nearer and nearer.  It reached the point
+where the curve of the opposite bank draws in to form the narrow
+raceway of the rapids.  It began to feel the stronger pull of those
+hidden hands that had carried it so easily down The Bend.  And
+then--and then--the unguided, helpless craft responded to the
+gentle pressure of some swirl or crosscurrent in the main flow of
+the stream, and swung a little to one side.  A few feet farther,
+and the new impulse became stronger.  Yielding easily to the
+current that drew it so gently across the invisible dividing-line
+between safety and destruction, the boat swung in toward the shore.
+A minute more, and it had drifted into that encircling curve of the
+bank where the current of the eddy carried it around and around.
+
+The boat seemed undecided.  Would it hold to the harbor of safety
+into which it had been drawn by the friendly current?  Would it
+swing out, again, into the main stream, and so to its own
+destruction?
+
+Three times the bow, pointing out from the eddy, crossed the
+danger-line, and, for a moment, hung on the very edge.  Three
+times, the invisible hands which held it drew it gently back to
+safety.  And so, finally, the little craft, so helpless, so alone,
+amid the many currents of the great river, came to rest against the
+narrow shelf of land at the foot of the bank below Auntie Sue's
+garden.
+
+The light in the window of Auntie Sue's room went out.  The soft
+moonlight flooded mountain and valley and stream.  The mad waters
+at Elbow Rock roared in their wild fury.  Always, always,--
+irresistibly, inevitably, unceasingly,--the river poured its
+strength toward the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AUNTIE SUE RECOGNIZES A GENTLEMAN.
+
+
+Before the sun was high enough to look over Schoolhouse Hill, the
+next morning, Judy went into the garden to dig some potatoes.
+
+Tom Warden's boys would come, some day before long, and dig them
+all, and put them away in the cellar for the winter.  But there was
+no need to hurry the gathering of the full crop, so the boys would
+come when it was most convenient; and, in the meantime, Judy would
+continue to dig from day to day all that were needed for the
+kitchen in the little log house by the river.  In spite of her poor
+crooked body, the mountain girl was strong and well used to hard
+work, so the light task was, for her, no hardship at all.
+
+As one will when first coming out of doors in the morning, Judy
+paused a moment to look about.  The sky, so clear and bright the
+evening before, was now a luminous gray.  The mountains were lost
+in a ghostly world of fog, through which the river moved in
+stealthy silence,--a dull thing of mystery, with only here and
+there a touch of silvery light upon its clouded surface.  The
+cottonwoods and willows, on the opposite shore, were mere dreams of
+trees,--gray, formless, and weird.  The air was filled with the
+dank earth-smell.  The heavy thundering roar of the never-ending
+war of the waters at Elbow Rock came louder and more menacing, but
+strangely unreal, as if the mist itself were filled with
+threatening sound.
+
+But to Judy, the morning was only the beginning of another day;--
+she looked, but did not see.  To her, the many ever-changing moods
+of Nature were without meaning.  With her basket in hand, she went
+down to the lower end of the garden, where she had dug potatoes the
+time before, and where she had left the fork sticking upright in
+the ground.
+
+A few minutes served to fill the basket; but, before starting back
+to the house, the mountain girl paused again to look out over the
+river.  Perhaps it was some vague memory of Auntie Sue's talk, the
+night before, that prompted her; perhaps it was some instinct,
+indefinite and obscure;--whatever it was that influenced her, Judy
+left her basket, and went to the brink of the high bank above the
+eddy for a closer view of the water.
+
+The next instant, with the quick movement of an untamed creature of
+her native mountain forests, the girl sprang back, and crouched
+close to the ground to hide from something she had seen at the foot
+of the bank.  Every movement of her twisted body expressed amazement
+and fear.  Her eyes were wild and excited.  She looked carefully
+about, as if for dangers that might be hidden in the fog.  Once, she
+opened her mouth as if to call.  Half-rising, she started as if to
+run to the house.  But, presently, curiosity apparently overruled
+her fear, and, throwing herself flat on the ground she wormed her
+way back to the brink of the river-bank.  Cautiously, without making
+a sound, she peered through the tall grass and weeds that fringed
+the rim above the eddy.
+
+The boat, which some kindly impulse of the river had drawn so
+gently aside from the stronger current that would have carried it
+down the rapids to the certain destruction waiting at Elbow Rock,
+still rested with its bow grounded on the shore, against which the
+eddying water had pushed it.  But the thing that had so startled
+Judy was a man who was lying, apparently unconscious, on the wet
+and muddy bottom-boards of the little craft.
+
+Breathlessly, the girl, looking down from the top of the bank,
+watched for some movement; but the dirty huddled heap of wretched
+humanity was so still that she could not guess whether it was
+living or dead.  Fearfully, she noted that there were no oars in
+the boat, nor gun, nor fishing-tackle of any sort.  The man's hat
+was missing.  His clothing was muddy and disarranged.  His position
+was such that she could not see the face.
+
+Drawing back, Judy looked cautiously about; then, picking up a
+heavy clod of dirt from the ploughed edge of the garden, and
+crouching again at the brink of the bank, ready for instant flight,
+she threw the clod into the water near the boat.  The still form in
+the boat made no movement following the splash.  Selecting a
+smaller clod, the girl threw the bit of dirt into the stern of the
+boat itself, where it broke in fragments.  And, at this, the figure
+moved slightly.
+
+"Hit's alive, all right," commented Judy to herself, with a grin of
+satisfaction, at the result of her investigation.  "But hit's sure
+time he was a-gittin' up."
+
+Carefully selecting a still smaller bit of dirt, she deliberately
+tossed it at the figure itself.  Her aim was true, and the clod
+struck the man on the shoulder, with the result that he stirred
+uneasily, and, muttering something which Judy could not hear, half-
+turned on his back so that the girl saw the haggard, unshaven face.
+She saw, too, that, in one hand, the man clutched an empty whisky
+bottle.
+
+At sight of the bottle, the mountain girl rose to her feet with an
+understanding laugh.  "Hell!" she said aloud; "drunk,--that's all--
+dead drunk.  I'll sure fetch him out of hit."  And then, grinning
+with malicious delight, she proceeded to pelt the man in the boat
+with clods of dirt until he scrambled to a sitting posture, and
+looked up in bewildered confusion.
+
+"If you please," he said, in a hoarse voice, to the sallow, old-
+young face that grinned down at him from the top of the bank,
+"which one of the Devil's imps are you?"
+
+As she looked into that upturned face, Judy's grin vanished.  "I
+sure 'lowed as how you-all was dead," she explained.
+
+"Well," returned the man in the boat, wearily, "I can assure you
+that it's not in the least my fault if I disappoint you.  I feel as
+bad about it as you do.  However, I don't think I am so much alive
+that it makes any material difference."  He lifted the whisky
+bottle, and studied it thoughtfully.
+
+"You-all come dad burned near not bein' ary bit alive," returned
+the girl.
+
+"Yes?" said the man, inquiringly.
+
+"Yep; you sure did come mighty nigh hit.  If your old John-boat had
+a-carried you-all on down ter Elbow Rock, 'stead of bein' ketched
+in the eddy here, you-all would sure 'nough been a-talkin' to the
+Devil by now."
+
+The man, looking out over the river into the fog, muttered to
+himself, "I can't even make a success of dying, it seems."
+
+Again, he regarded the empty bottle in his hand with studied
+interest.  Then, tossing the bottle into the river, he looked up,
+once more, to the girl on the bank above.
+
+"Listen, sister!" he said, nervously.  "Is there any place around
+here where I can buy a drink?  I need something rather badly.
+Where am I, anyway?"
+
+"You-all are at Auntie Sue's place," said Judy; "an' there sure
+ain't no chance for you-all ter git ary licker here.  Where'd you-
+all come from, anyhow?  How'd you-all git here 'thout no oars ner
+paddle ner nothin'?  Where was you-all aimin' ter go?"
+
+"Your questions, my good girl, are immaterial and irrelevant,"
+returned the man in the boat.  "The all-important matter before us
+for consideration is,--how can I get a drink?  I MUST have a drink,
+I tell you!"  He held up his hands, and they were shaking as if
+with palsy.  "And I must have it damned quick!"
+
+"You-all sure do talk some powerful big words," said Judy, with
+critical interest.  "You-all sure must be some eddecated.  Auntie
+Sue, now, she talks--"
+
+The man interrupted her:  "Who is 'Auntie Sue'?"
+
+"I don't know," Judy returned; "she's just Auntie Sue--that's all I
+know.  She sure is--"
+
+Again the man interrupted:  "I think it would be well for me to
+interview this worthy aunt of yours."  And then, while he raised
+himself, unsteadily, to his feet, he continued, in a muttering
+undertone:  "You don't seem to appreciate the situation.  If I
+don't get some sort of liquor soon, things are bound to happen."
+
+He attempted to step from the boat to the shore; but the instability
+of the light, flat-bottomed skiff, together with his own unsteady
+weakness, combined to land him half in the water and half on the
+muddy bank where he struggled helplessly, and, in his weakened
+condition, would have slipped wholly into the river had not Judy
+rushed down the rude steps to his assistance.
+
+With a strength surprising in one of her apparent weakness, the
+mountain girl caught the stranger under his shoulders and literally
+dragged him from the water.  When she had further helped him to his
+feet, Judy surveyed the wretched object of her beneficence with
+amused and curious interest.
+
+The man, with his unkempt hair, unshaven, haggard face, bloodshot
+eyes, and slovenly dishevelled dress, had appeared repulsive enough
+while in the boat; but, now, as he stood dripping with water and
+covered with mud, there was a touch of the ridiculous in his
+appearance that brought a grin to the unlovely face of his rescuer,
+and caused her to exclaim with unnecessary frankness:  "I'll be dad
+burned if you-all ain't a thing ter look at, mister!"
+
+As the poor creature, who was shaking as if with the ague, regarded
+the twisted form, the wry neck, and the sallow, old-young face of
+the girl, who was laughing at him, a gleam of sardonic humor
+flashed in his bloodshot eyes.  "Thanks," he said, huskily; "you
+are something of a vision yourself, aren't you?"
+
+The laughter went from Judy's face as she caught the meaning of the
+cruel words.  "I ain't never laid no claim ter bein' a beauty," she
+retorted in her shrill, drawling monotone.  "But, I kin tell you-
+all one thing, mister:  Hit was God-A'mighty Hisself an' my drunken
+pap what made me ter look like I do.  While you,--damn you!--you-
+all just naturally made yourself what you be."
+
+At the mountain girl's illiterate words, so pregnant with meaning,
+a remarkable change came over the face and manner of the man.  His
+voice, even, for the moment, lost its huskiness, and vibrated with
+sincere feeling as he steadied himself; and, bowing with courteous
+deference, said:  "I beg your pardon, miss.  That was unkind.  You
+really should have left me to the river."
+
+"You-all would a-drownded, sure, if I had," she retorted, somewhat
+mollified by the effect of her observation.
+
+"Which," he returned, "would have been so beautifully right and
+fitting that it evidently could not be."  And with this cynical
+remark, his momentary bearing of self-respect was gone.
+
+"Are you-all a-meanin' ter say that you-all was a-wantin' ter
+drown?"
+
+"Something like that," he returned.  And then, with a hint of
+ugliness in his voice and eyes, he rasped:  "But, look here, girl!
+do you think I'm going to stand like this all day indulging in idle
+conversation with you?  Where is this aunt of yours?  Can't you see
+that I've got to have a drink?"
+
+He started uncertainly toward the steps that led to the top of the
+bank, and Judy, holding him by his arm, helped him to climb the
+steep way.  A part of the ascent he made on hands and knees.
+Several times he would have fallen except for the girl's support.
+But, at last, they gained the top, and stood in the garden.
+
+"That there is the house," said Judy, pointing.  "But I don't
+reckon as how you-all kin git ary licker there."
+
+The wretched man made no reply; but, with Judy still supporting
+him, stumbled forward across the rows of vegetables.
+
+The two had nearly reached the steps at the end of the porch when
+Auntie Sue came from the house to see why Judy did not return with
+the potatoes.  The dear old lady paused a moment, startled at the
+presence of the unprepossessing stranger in her garden.  Then, with
+an exclamation of pity, she hurried to meet them.
+
+The man, whose gaze as he shambled along was fixed on the ground,
+did not notice Auntie Sue until, feeling Judy stop, he also paused,
+and raising his head looked full at the beautiful old lady.
+
+"Why, Judy!" cried Auntie Sue, her low, sweet voice filled with
+gentle concern.  "What in the world has happened?"
+
+With an expression of questioning bewilderment and rebuke on his
+haggard face, the man also turned to the mountain girl beside him.
+
+"I found him in er John-boat what done come ashore last night, down
+there in the eddy," Judy explained to Auntie Sue.  To the man, she
+said:  "This here is Auntie Sue, mister; but, I don't reckon as how
+she's got ary licker for you."
+
+"'Liquor'?" questioned Auntie Sue.  "What in the world do you mean,
+child?"  Then quickly to the stranger;--"My dear man, you are
+wringing wet.  You must have been in the river.  Come, come right
+in, and let us do something for you."  As she spoke, she went
+toward him with outstretched hands.
+
+But the wretched creature shrank back from her, as if in fear;--his
+whole body shaking with emotion; his fluttering hands raised in a
+gesture of imploring protest;--while the eyes that looked up at the
+saintly countenance of the old gentlewoman were the eyes of a soul
+sunken in the deepest hell of shame and humiliation.
+
+Shocked with pitying horror, Auntie Sue paused.
+
+The man's haggard, unshaven face twitched and worked with the pain
+of his suffering.  He bit his lips and fingered his quivering chin
+in a vain effort at self-control; and then, as he looked up at her,
+the sunken, bloodshot eyes filled with tears that the tormented
+spirit had no power to check.
+
+And Auntie Sue turned her face away.
+
+For a little, they stood so.  Then, as Auntie Sue faced him again,
+the stranger, with a supreme effort of his will, gained a momentary
+control of his shattered nerves.  Drawing himself erect and
+standing steady and tall before her, he raised a hand to his
+uncovered head as if to remove his hat.  When his hand found no hat
+to remove, he smiled as if at some jest at his own expense.
+
+"I am so sorry, madam," he said,--and his voice was musically clear
+and cultured.  "Please pardon me for disturbing you?  I did not
+know.  This young woman should have explained.  You see, when she
+spoke of 'Auntie Sue,' I assumed, of course,--I mean,--I expected
+to find a native woman who would--"  He paused, smiling again, as
+if to assure her that he fully appreciated the humor of his
+ridiculous predicament.
+
+"But, my dear sir," cried Auntie Sue, eagerly, "there is nothing to
+pardon.  Please do come into the house and let us help you."
+
+But the stranger drew back, shaking his head sadly.  "You do not
+understand, madam.  It is not that my clothes are unpresentable,--
+it is I, myself, who am unfit to stand in your presence, much less
+to enter your house.  I thank you, but I must go."
+
+He was turning away, when Auntie Sue reached his side and placed
+her gentle old hand lightly on his arm.
+
+"Please, won't you come in, sir?  I shall never forgive myself if I
+let you go like this."
+
+The man's voice was hoarse and shaking, now, as he answered:  "For
+God's sake, madam, don't touch me!  Let me go!  You must!  I--I--am
+not myself!  You might not be safe with me!  Ask her--she knows!"
+He turned to Judy.
+
+"He's done said hit, ma'm," said Judy, in answer to Auntie Sue's
+questioning look.  "My pap, he was that way when he done smashed me
+up agin the wall, when I was nothin' but a baby, an' hit made me
+grow up all crooked an' ugly like what I be now."
+
+With one shamed glance at Auntie Sue, the wretched fellow looked
+down at the ground.  His head drooped forward.  His shoulders
+sagged.  His whole body seemed to shrink.  Turning sadly away, he
+again started back toward the river.
+
+"Stop!"  Auntie Sue's voice rang out imperiously.
+
+The man halted.
+
+"Look at me," she commanded.
+
+Slowly, he raised his eyes.  The gentle old teacher spoke with fine
+spirit, now, but kindly still:  "This is sheer nonsense, my boy.
+You wouldn't hurt me.  Why, you couldn't!  Of course, you are not
+yourself; but, do you think that I do not know a gentleman when I
+meet one?  Come--"  She held out her hand.
+
+A moment he stood, gazing at her in wondering awe.  Then his far-
+overtaxed strength failed;--his abused nerves refused to bear
+more,--and he sank,--a pitiful, cowering heap at her feet.  Hiding
+his face in his shaking hands, he sobbed like a child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+IN THE LOG HOUSE BY THE RIVER.
+
+
+Those two women managed, somehow, to get the almost helpless
+stranger into the house, where Auntie Sue, after providing him with
+nightclothes, left by one of her guests, by tactful entreaty and
+judicial commands, persuaded him to go to bed.
+
+Then followed several days and nights of weary watching.  There
+were times when the man lay with closed eyes, so weak and exhausted
+that he seemed to be drifting out from these earthly shores on the
+deep waters of that wide and unknown sea into which all the streams
+of life finally flow.  But, always, Auntie Sue miraculously held
+him back.  There were other times when, by all the rules of the
+game, he should have worn a strait-jacket;--when his delirium
+filled the room with all manner of horrid creatures from the pit;
+when leering devils and loathsome serpents and gibbering apes
+tormented him until his unnatural strength was the strength of a
+fiend, and his tortured nerves shrieked in agony.  But Auntie Sue
+perversely ignored the rules of the game.  And never did the man,
+even in his most terrible moments, fail to recognize in the midst
+of the hellish crew of his diseased imagination the silvery-haired
+old teacher as the angel of his salvation.  Her gentle voice had
+always power to soothe and calm him.  He obeyed her implicitly,
+and, like a frightened child, holding fast to her hand would beg
+piteously for her to protect and save him.
+
+But no word of the man's low-muttered, broken sentences, nor of his
+wildest ravings, ever gave Auntie Sue a clue to his identity.  She
+searched his clothes, but there was not a thing to give her even
+his name.
+
+And, yet, that first day, when Judy would have gone to neighbor
+Tom's for help, Auntie Sue said "No."  She even positively forbade
+the girl to mention the stranger's presence in the house, should
+she chance to talk with passing neighbors.  "The river brought him
+to us, Judy, dear," she said.  "We must save him.  No one shall
+know his shame, to humiliate and wound his pride and drag him down
+after he is himself again.  Until he has recovered and is once more
+the man I believe him to be, no one must see him or know that he is
+here; and no one must ever know how he came to us."
+
+And late, one evening, when Judy was fast asleep, and the man was
+lying very still after a period of feverish tossing and muttering,
+the dear old gentlewoman crept quietly out of the house into the
+night.  She was gone some time, and when she returned again to the
+stranger's bedside she was breathless and trembling as from some
+unusual exertion.  And the following afternoon, when Judy came to
+her with the announcement that the boat which had brought the man
+to them was no longer in the eddy below the garden, Auntie Sue
+said, simply, that she was glad it was gone, and cautioned the
+girl, again, that the stranger's presence in the house must not be
+made known to any one.
+
+When the mountain girl protested, saying, "You-all ain't got no
+call ter be a-wearin' yourself ter the bone a-takin' care of such
+as him," Auntie Sue answered, "Hush, Judy!  How do you know what
+the poor boy really is?"
+
+To which Judy retorted:  "He's just triflin' an' ornery an' no
+'count, that's what he is, or he sure wouldn't been a-floatin'
+'round in that there old John-boat 'thout ary gun, or fishin'
+lines, or hat even, ter say nothin' of that there whisky bottle
+bein' plumb empty."
+
+Auntie Sue made no reply to the mountain girl's harsh summing-up of
+the damning evidence against the stranger, but left her and went
+softly to the bedside of their guest.
+
+It was perhaps an hour later that Judy, quietly entering the room,
+happened upon a scene that caused her to stand as if rooted to the
+spot in open-mouthed amazement.
+
+The man was sleeping, and the silvery-haired old maiden-lady,
+seated on the side of the bed, was bending over the unconscious
+stranger and gently stroking his tumbled, red-brown hair, even as a
+mother might lovingly caress her sleeping child.  And then, as Judy
+watched, breathless with wonder, the proud old gentlewoman, bending
+closer over that still form on the bed, touched her lips--soft as a
+rose-petal--to the stranger's brow.
+
+When she arose and saw Judy standing there, Auntie Sue's delicate
+old cheeks flushed with color, and her eyes were shining.  With a
+gesture, she commanded the girl to silence, and the two tiptoed
+from the room.  When they were outside, and Auntie Sue had
+cautiously closed the door, she faced the speechless Judy with a
+deliciously defiant air that could not wholly hide her lovely
+confusion.
+
+"I--I--was thinking, Judy, how he--how he--might have been--my
+son."
+
+"Your 'son'!" ejaculated the girl.  "Why, ma'm, you-all ain't never
+even been married, as I've ever hearn tell, have you?"
+
+Auntie Sue drew her thin shoulders proudly erect, and, lifting her
+fine old face, answered the challenging question with splendid
+spirit:  "No, I have never been married; but I might have been; and
+if I had, I suppose I could have had a son, couldn't I?"
+
+The vanquished Judy retreated to the kitchen, where, in safety, she
+sank into a chair, convulsed with laughter, which she instinctively
+muffled in her apron.
+
+Then came the day when the man, weak and worn with his struggle,
+looked up at his gentle old nurse with the light of sanity in his
+deep blue eyes.  Very tired eyes they were, and filled with painful
+memories,--filled, too, with worshipping gratitude and wonder.
+
+She smiled down at him with delighted triumph, and drawing a chair
+close beside the bed, seated herself and placed her soft hand on
+his where it lay on the coverlid.
+
+"You are much better, this morning," she said cheerily.  "You will
+soon be all right, now."  And as she looked into the eyes that
+regarded hers so questioningly, there was in her face and manner no
+hint of doubt, or pretense, or reproach;--only confidence and love.
+
+He spoke slowly, as if feeling for words:  "I have been in Hell;
+and you--you have brought me out.  Why did you do it?"
+
+"Because you are mine," she answered, with her low chuckling laugh.
+It was so good to have him able to talk to her rationally after
+those long hours of fighting.
+
+"Because I am yours?" he repeated, puzzling over her words.
+
+"Yes," she returned, with a hint of determined proprietorship in
+her voice; "because you belong to me.  You see, that eddy where
+your boat landed is my property, and so anything that drifts down
+the river and lodges there belongs to me.  Whatever the river
+brings to me, is mine.  The river brought you, and so--"  She
+finished with another laugh,--a laugh that was filled with tender
+mother-yearning.
+
+The blue eyes smiled back at her for a moment; then she saw them
+darken with painful memories.
+
+"Oh, yes; the river," he said.  "I wanted the river to do something
+for me, and--and it did something quite different from what I
+wanted."
+
+"Of course," she returned, eagerly, "the river is always like that.
+It always does the thing you don't expect it to do.  Just like life
+itself.  Don't you see?  It begins somewhere away off at some
+little spring, and just keeps going and going and going; and
+thousands and thousands of other springs, scattered all over the
+country, start streams and creeks and branches that run into it,
+and make it bigger and bigger, as it winds and curves and twists
+along, until it finally reaches the great sea, where its waters are
+united with all the waters from all the rivers in all the world.
+And in all of its many, many miles, from that first tiny spring to
+the sea, there are not two feet of it exactly alike.  In all the
+centuries of its being, there are never two hours alike.  An
+infinite variety of days and nights--an infinite variety of skies
+and light and clouds and daybreaks and sunsets--an infinite number
+and variety of currents and shoals and deep places and quiet spots
+and dangerous rapids and eddies--and, along its banks, an endless
+change of hills and mountains and flats and forests and meadows and
+farms and cities--and--"  She paused, breathless.  And then, when
+he did not speak, but only watched her, she continued:  "Don't you
+see?  Of course, the river never could be what you expect, any more
+than life could be exactly what you want and dream it will be."
+
+"Who in the world are you?" he asked, wonderingly.  "And what in
+the world are you doing here in the backwoods?"
+
+Smiling at his puzzled expression, she answered:  "I am Auntie Sue.
+I am LIVING here in the backwoods."
+
+"But, your real name?  Won't you tell me your name?  I must know
+how to address you."
+
+"Oh, my name is Susan E. Wakefield--MISS Wakefield, if you please.
+I shall be seventy-one years old the eighteenth day of next
+November.  And you must call me 'Auntie Sue,'--just as every one
+else does."
+
+"Wakefield--Wakefield--where have I seen that name?"  He wrinkled
+his brow in an effort to remember.  "Wakefield--I feel sure that I
+have heard it, somewhere."
+
+"It is not unlikely," she returned, lightly.  "It is not at all an
+uncommon name.  And now that I am properly introduced, don't you
+think--?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, then said, deliberately, "My name is Brian
+Kent."
+
+"That is an Irish name," she said quickly; "and that is why your
+hair is so nearly red and your eyes so blue."
+
+"Yes," he returned, "from my mother.  And please don't ask me more
+now, for I can't lie to you, and I won't tell you the truth."  And
+she saw, again, the dark shadows of painful memories come into the
+blue eyes.
+
+Bending over the bed, she laid her soft hand on his brow, and
+pushed back his heavy hair; and her sweet old voice was very low
+and gentle as she said:  "My dear boy, I shall never ask you more.
+The river brought you to me, and you are mine.  You must not even
+think of anything else, just now.  When you are stronger, and are
+ready, we will talk of your future; but of your past, you--"
+
+A loud knock sounded at the door of the living room.
+
+"There is someone at the door," she said hastily.  "I must go.  Lie
+still, and go to sleep like a good boy; won't you?"
+
+Swiftly, she leaned over, and, before he realized, he felt her lips
+touch his forehead.  Then she was gone, and Brian Kent's Irish eyes
+were filled with tears.  Turning to the wall, he hid his face in
+the pillow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OFFICERS OF THE LAW.
+
+
+As Auntie Sue was closing the door of her guest's room carefully
+behind her, Judy came from the kitchen in great excitement, and the
+knocking at the front door of the house was repeated.
+
+"Hit's the Sheriff, ma'm," whispered Judy.  "I was just a-comin'
+ter tell you.  I seed 'em from the kitchen-winder.  He's got two
+other men with him.  Their hosses is tied ter the fence in front.
+What in hell will we do, now?  They are after him in there, sure
+'s death!"
+
+Auntie Sue's face was white, and her lips trembled,--but only for a
+moment.
+
+"Go back into the kitchen, Judy, and stay there," she commanded, in
+a whisper; and went to open the front door as calmly as if nothing
+unusual had happened.
+
+Sheriff Knox was a big man, with a bluff, kindly manner, and a
+voice that made nothing of closed doors.  He returned Auntie Sue's
+greeting heartily, and, with one of his companions,--a quiet,
+business-looking gentleman,--accepted her cordial invitation to
+come in.  The third man of the party remained near the saddle-
+horses at the gate.
+
+"Well, Auntie Sue," said the Sheriff, settling his ponderous bulk
+in one of the old lady's rocking-chairs, which certainly was not
+built to carry such a weight, "how are you?  I haven't seen you in
+a coon's age.  I'll swear, though, you ain't a minute older than
+you was when you first begun teachin' the little Elbow Rock school
+up there on the hill, are you?"
+
+"I don't know, Sheriff," Auntie Sue returned, with a nervous little
+laugh.  "I sometimes think that I am a few days older.  I have
+watched a good many sunsets since then, you know."
+
+The big officer's laughter almost shook the log walls of the house.
+To his quiet companion, who had taken a chair near the window, he
+said:  "I'll have to tell you, Ross, that Auntie Sue owns every
+sunset in these Ozark Mountains.  What was it you paid for them?"
+He turned again to their smiling hostess.  "Oh, yes; fifty cents an
+acre for the land and fourteen dollars and a half for the sunsets.
+You'll have to be blamed careful not to trespass on the sunsets in
+this neighborhood, Ross."  Again, his hearty laugh roared out,
+while his chair threatened to collapse with the quaking of his
+massive body.
+
+The gentleman seated at the window laughed quietly, in sympathy.
+
+"You'll be all right, though, Ross," the Sheriff continued, "as
+long as you're with me.  Auntie Sue and me have been friends for
+about twenty year, now.  I always stop to see her whenever I'm
+passing through the Elbow Rock neighborhood, if I ain't in too big
+a hurry.  Stayed with her a week, once, five years ago, when we was
+after that Lewis gang.  She knows I'd jail any man on earth that
+would even touch one of her sunsets."
+
+Then, as if the jesting allusion to his office reminded him of his
+professional duties, he added:  "I plumb forgot, Auntie Sue, this
+gentleman is Mr. Ross.  He is one of William J. Burns's crack
+detectives.  Don't be scared, though, he ain't after you."
+
+Auntie Sue, while joining in the laughter, and acknowledging the
+introduction, regarded the business-looking gentleman by the window
+with intense interest.
+
+"I think," she said, slowly,--and the sweetness of her low, cultured
+voice was very marked in contrast to the Sheriff's thundering
+tones,--"I think, sir, that this is the first time in my life that I
+ever saw a real detective.  I have read about them, of course."
+
+Mr. Ross was captivated by the charm of this beautiful old
+gentlewoman, who regarded him with such child-like interest, and
+who spoke with such sweet frankness and dignity.  Smilingly, he
+returned:
+
+"I fear, madam, that you would find me very disappointing.  No one
+that I ever knew in my profession could hope to live up to the
+reputation given us by the story-books.  No secret service man
+living can remotely approximate the deeds performed by the
+detectives of fiction.  We are very, very human, I can assure you."
+
+"I am sure that you, at least, must be very kind," returned Auntie
+Sue, gently.  And the cheeks of the experienced officer flushed
+like the cheeks of a schoolboy.
+
+"Mr. Ross, Auntie Sue," said the Sheriff, "is, as I was telling
+you, one of William J. Burns's big men."
+
+Auntie Sue gave her attention to her big friend:  "Yes?"
+
+The Sheriff continued:  "Now, the Burns people, you see, protect
+the banks all over the country."
+
+"Yes?" came, again, in a tone so low and gentle that the monosyllable
+was scarcely heard.
+
+The officer's loud voice went on:  "And Mr. Ross, here, works most
+of his time on these bank cases.  Just now, he is trailing a fellow
+that got away with a lot of money from the Empire Consolidated
+Savings Bank, of Chicago, about a month ago;--that is, the man
+disappeared about a month ago.  He had been stealing along from the
+bank for about a year,--worked, for them, you see."
+
+"The Empire Consolidated Savings Bank!"  Auntie Sue spoke the words
+in a voice that was little more than a whisper.  It was to the
+Empire Consolidated Savings Bank that she had sent the money which
+she had received from her brother in Buenos Aires; and Homer T.
+Ward, the president of that bank, was one of her old pupils.  Why,
+her stranger guest, in the other room there, was that very moment
+wearing one of the bank president's nightshirts.
+
+"And do you"--Auntie Sue addressed the detective--"do you know the
+man's name, Mr. Ross?"
+
+"Oh, yes," returned the officer, "his name is Brian Kent."
+
+Some source of strength, deep-hidden in her gentle nature, enabled
+Auntie Sue to control her emotions, though her voice broke a little
+as she slowly repeated the man's name, "Brian Kent.  And do I
+understand, sir, that you have traced the man to this--neighborhood?"
+
+The detective was too skilled not to notice Auntie Sue's manner and
+the break in her voice; but he never dreamed that this old
+gentlewoman's agitation was caused by a deeper interest than a
+quite natural fear that a dangerous criminal might be lurking in
+the immediate vicinity.
+
+"Not exactly, Mrs.--ah--"
+
+"Miss Wakefield,"--she supplied her name with a smile.
+
+With a courteous bow, the detective continued:  "We do not know for
+sure that the man is in this neighborhood, Miss Wakefield.  There
+is really no cause for you to be alarmed.  Even if he should call
+at your house, here, you need not be frightened, for I assure you
+the man is not at all a dangerous character."
+
+"I am glad," said Auntie Sue; and she laughed a little with a
+relief more genuine than her callers knew.
+
+Detective Ross continued as if anxious to finish his unpleasant
+duty:  "It is too bad for us to be disturbing you with this
+business, Miss Wakefield, and I hope you will forgive us; but, the
+case is like this:  We traced our man to the little town of Borden,
+some forty miles up the river from here.  He disappeared from the
+hotel one night, leaving his suit-case and, apparently, everything
+he had with him, and not a soul that we can find has seen him
+since.  Of course, everybody says 'suicide.'  He had been drinking
+heavily and acting rather queer the two or three days he was at the
+hotel,--it seems.  But I am not willing, yet, to accept the suicide
+idea as final, because it would be too easy for him to give things
+that appearance in order to throw us off; and I can't get away from
+the fact that a John-boat that was tied to the bank near the hotel
+managed to break loose and drift off down the river that same
+night.  Working on my theory, we are following down the river,
+trying to get trace of either the boat or the man.  So far, we
+haven't heard of either, which rather strengthens me in my belief
+that the boat and the man went away together.  He is probably
+traveling nights, and lying up under the willows in daylight.  But
+he will be compelled to show himself somewhere, soon, in order to
+get something to eat, for he couldn't have taken much with him,
+trying, as he was, to create the impression that he had committed
+suicide.  You have a wonderful view of the river here, Miss
+Wakefield."
+
+"Yes, sir; it is beautiful from the porch."
+
+"You spend a good deal of time on the porch, do you?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And you would be quite likely to notice any boat passing, wouldn't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Could you see a boat at night,--in the moonlight, I mean?"
+
+"I could if it were well out in the middle of the stream, away from
+the shadow of the trees, along the bank."
+
+"Have you seen any boats pass lately, Miss Wakefield?"
+
+"No, sir; I haven't seen a boat on the river for a month, at
+least."
+
+"Dead certain about it, are you, Auntie Sue?" asked the Sheriff.
+
+"Yes, sir; I am very sure," she returned.  "Judy and I were talking
+about it yesterday."
+
+"Who is Judy?" asked the detective.
+
+The Sheriff answered, "Just a girl that lives with Auntie Sue."
+
+And Auntie Sue added:  "I know Judy has seen no boats passing,
+because, as I say, we were talking about it."
+
+"I see," said the detective.  "And may I ask, Miss Wakefield, if
+any one--any stranger, I mean--has called at the house lately, or
+if you have seen any one in the vicinity?"
+
+The gentle old lady hesitated.
+
+The officers thought she was searching her memory to be sure before
+she answered.
+
+Then Auntie Sue said, deliberately:  "No, sir; we have not seen a
+stranger in this vicinity for several weeks.  The last one was a
+mule-buyer, who stopped to ask if he was on the right road to Tom
+Warden's; and that must have been fully six weeks ago."
+
+The detective looked at Sheriff Knox.
+
+"Well," said the big officer, "I reckon we might as well push
+along."
+
+The two men arose.
+
+"Oh, but surely you will stay for dinner," said Auntie Sue, while
+her dear heart was faint with fear lest they accept, and thus bring
+about who could say what disastrous consequences through their
+meeting with Judy.
+
+"Not this time, Auntie Sue," returned the Sheriff.  "Mr. Ross is
+anxious to get on down the river as fast as he can.  He's got men
+on watch at White's Crossing, and if our man ain't passed there, or
+if we don't strike his trail somewhere before we get there, we will
+jump back on the railroad, and get some boy to bring the horses
+through later."
+
+"I see," returned Auntie Sue.  And to the detective she added,
+smiling:  "I am sure it must be very difficult for any one to
+escape you, Mr. Ross.  I have read such wonderful things about Mr.
+Burns and the work of his organization; and now that I have met
+you,--a real live detective,--I shall be very careful, indeed,
+about what I do in the future.  I shouldn't want to have you on my
+track, I assure you."
+
+The two men laughed heartily, and the detective, as he extended his
+hand in farewell, returned:  "I count it a great privilege to have
+met you, Miss Wakefield; and if you will promise to do one thing
+for me, I'll agree to be very lenient with you if I am ever
+assigned to a case in which you are to be brought to justice."
+
+"I promise," returned the old lady, quickly.  "I really wouldn't
+dare to refuse under the circumstances, would I?  What do you want
+me to do, Mr. Ross?"
+
+"If this man Brian Kent should happen to appear in this vicinity,
+will you get a message as quickly as possible, at any cost, to
+Sheriff Knox?"
+
+"Why, of course," agreed Auntie Sue.  "But you have not yet told me
+what the man looks like, Mr. Ross."
+
+"He is really a fine looking chap," the detective answered.
+"Thirty years old--fully six feet tall--rather slender, but well
+built--weighs about one hundred fifty--a splendid head--smooth
+shaven--reddish hair--dark blue eyes--and a high, broad forehead.
+He is of Irish extraction--is cultured--very courteous in his
+manner and speech--dresses well--and knows a lot about books and
+authors and such things."
+
+"I would surely know him from that description," said Auntie Sue,
+thinking of the wretched creature who had fallen, sobbing, at her
+feet so short a time before.  "But, you do not make him seem like a
+criminal at all.  It is strange that a man such as you describe
+should be a fugitive from the law, is it not?"
+
+"We come in contact with many strange things in our business, Miss
+Wakefield," the Burns operative answered--a little sadly, Auntie
+Sue thought.  "Life itself is so strange and complex, though you in
+your quiet retreat, here, can scarcely find it so."
+
+"Indeed, I find life very wonderful, Mr. Ross, even here in my
+little house by the river," she answered, slowly.
+
+Sheriff Knox held out a newspaper to Auntie Sue:  "Just happened to
+remember that I had it in my pocket," he said.  "It gives a pretty
+full account of this fellow Kent's case.  You will notice there is
+a big reward offered for his capture.  If you can catch him for us,
+you'll make enough money to keep you mighty nigh all the rest of
+your life."  And the officer's great laugh boomed out at the
+thought of the old school-teacher as a thief-catcher.
+
+"By the way, Sheriff," said Auntie Sue, as they were finally saying
+good-bye at the door, "you didn't happen to ask at Thompsonville
+for my mail, did you, as you came through?"  Her voice was
+trembling, now, with eagerness and anxiety.
+
+"I'm plumb sorry, Auntie Sue, but I didn't.  You see, we were so
+busy on this job, I clean forgot about stopping here; and, besides,
+we might have caught our man before we got this far, you see."
+
+"Of course," returned Auntie Sue, "I should have thought of that;
+but I have been rather anxious about an important letter that seems
+to have been delayed.  Some of the neighbors will probably be going
+to the office to-day, though.  Good-bye!  You know you are always
+welcome, Sheriff; and you, too, Mr. Ross, if you should ever happen
+to be in this part of the country again."
+
+"A wonderful old woman, Ross," commented Sheriff Knox as they were
+riding away.  And the quiet, business-looking detective, whose life
+had been spent in combating crime and deception, answered, as he
+waved farewell to Auntie Sue, who watched them from the door of the
+little log house by the river, "A very wonderful woman, indeed,--
+the loveliest old lady I have ever met,--and the most remarkable."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN THE LAW.
+
+
+When she had watched Sheriff Knox and his two companions ride out
+of sight, Auntie Sue turned slowly back into the house to face
+Judy, who stood accusingly in the kitchen doorway.
+
+For what seemed a long time, the old gentlewoman and the deformed
+mountain girl stood silently looking at each other.  Then Auntie
+Sue nervously crossed the room to lay the newspaper, which the
+Sheriff had given her, on the table beside her basket of sewing.
+
+Without speaking, Judy followed her, watching every movement
+intently.
+
+Turning to face her companion again, Auntie Sue stood, still
+speechless, clasping and unclasping her thin old hands.
+
+Judy spoke in her shrill, drawling monotone:  "You-all have sure
+fixed hit this here time, hain't you?  Can't you-all see what a
+hell of a hole you've done got us inter?"
+
+When Auntie Sue apparently could not reply, Judy continued:  "Just
+as if hit wasn't more 'n enough for you-all ter go an' wear
+yourself plumb out a-takin' keer of that there ornery, no-'count
+feller, what I never ought ter dragged out of the river nohow.
+An', now, you-all got ter go an' just naturally lie like you did
+ter the Sheriff an' that there deteckertive man.  I was plumb
+scared to death a-listenin' ter you through the crack in the
+kitchen door.  I 'lowed every minute they'd ketch you, sure.  My
+Lord-A'mighty! ma'm, can't you-all figger what'll happen ter weuns
+if they ever finds out that weuns done had him hid right here in
+this here house all the time?  I never heard tell of such dad
+burned, fool doin's in all my born days!  I sure wish ter God that
+there old John-boat had a-tuck him off down the river an' smashed
+him up agin Elbow Rock, like hit ort, an' not a-fetched him ter our
+door ter git weuns in jail for savin' his worthless, no-'count
+hide,--I sure do!"
+
+"But, Judy, I never in all my life did such a thing before," said
+Auntie Sue in a tremulous whisper, too overwrought to speak aloud.
+
+"You-all ain't a-needin' ter do hit but onct, neither.  Onct is
+sure a heap plenty for that there big Sheriff man.  Just look what
+he did ter my pap!  He's jailed pap seven times, that I kin
+rec'lect.  God-A'mighty knows how many times he ketched him 'fore I
+was borned.  An' pap, he didn't do so mighty much ary time,
+neither."
+
+"I just had to do it, Judy, dear," protested Auntie Sue.  "It
+seemed as if I simply could not tell the truth: something wouldn't
+let me."
+
+Judy, unheeding her companion's agitation, continued reviewing the
+situation:  "An' just look at all the money you-all done lost!"
+
+"Money?" questioned Auntie Sue.
+
+"Yep, 'money:'--that there reward what they'd a-paid you-all if
+you-all hadn't a-lied like you did.  I reckon as how there'd a-been
+as much, maybe, as what was in that there letter you-all done sent
+ter the bank an' ain't never heard tell of since.  Hit's most
+likely clean gone by now, an' here you done gone an' throw'd this
+other away,--plumb throw'd hit away!"
+
+At this, Auntie Sue's spirit suddenly flashed into fiery
+indignation.
+
+"Judith Taylor," she said sharply, "how can you suggest such a
+wicked thing?  Why, I would--I would--DIE before I would accept a
+penny for doing such a thing!"
+
+And it was Judy, now, who stood silent and abashed before the
+aroused Auntie Sue.
+
+"Don't ever speak of such a thing again!" continued the old lady.
+"And remember, we must be more careful than ever, now, not to let
+any one--not a soul--know that Mr.--Mr.--Burns is in the house, or
+that we ever saw him!"
+
+"That there deteckertive man said as how the feller's name was
+Brian Kent, didn't be?" muttered the sullen Judy.
+
+"I don't care what the detective man said!" retorted Auntie Sue.
+"I am telling you that his name is Brian Burns, and you had better
+remember it!  You had better remember, too, that if anybody ever
+finds out the truth about him, you and I will go right along to
+jail with him!"
+
+"Yes, ma'm; I sure ain't aimin' ter forgit that," replied the
+humbled Judy; and she slouched away to the kitchen.
+
+Auntie Sue went to the door of Brian Kent's room.  But, with her
+hand outstretched toward the latch, she hesitated.  Had he heard?
+The Sheriff's voice had been so loud.  She feared to enter, yet she
+knew that she must.  At last, she knocked timidly, and, when there
+was no answer, knocked again, louder.  Cautiously, she opened the
+door.
+
+The man lay with his face to the wall,--to all appearances fast
+asleep.
+
+She tiptoed to the bed, and stood looking down upon the stranger
+for whom, without a shadow of reason,--one would have said,--she
+had violated one of the most deeply rooted principles of her
+seventy years.
+
+To Auntie Sue, daughter of New England Puritanism, and religious to
+the deeps of her being, a lie was abhorrent,--and she had lied,--
+deliberately, carefully, and with painstaking skill she had lied.
+She had not merely evaded the truth; she had lied,--and that to
+save a man of whom she knew nothing except that he was a fugitive
+from the law.  And the strangest thing about it was this, that she
+was glad.  She could not feel one twinge of regret for her sin.
+She could not even feel that she had, indeed, sinned.  She had even
+a feeling of pride and triumph that she had lied so successfully.
+She was troubled, though, about this new and wholly unexpected
+development in her life.  It had been so easy for her.  She had
+lied so naturally, so instinctively.
+
+She remembered how she had spoken to Brian Kent of the river and of
+life.  She saw, now, that the river symbolized not only life as a
+whole, with its many ever-changing conditions and currents, amid
+which the individual must live;--the river symbolized, as truly,
+the individual life, with its ever-changing moods and motives,--its
+ever-varying and often-conflicting currents of instinct and
+training,--its infinite variety of intellectual deeps and
+shallows,--its gentle places of spiritual calm,--and its wild and
+turbulent rapids of dangerous passion.
+
+"What hitherto unsuspected currents in her life-river," she asked
+herself, "had carried her so easily into falsehood?  What strange
+forces were these," she wondered, "that had set her so suddenly
+against honesty and truthfulness and law and justice?  And this
+stranger,--this wretched, haggard-faced, drunken creature, who had
+been brought by the mysterious currents of life to her door,--what
+was there in him that so compelled her protecting interest?  What
+was it within him, deeply hidden under the repellent exterior of
+his being, that had so awakened in her that strange feeling of
+possession,--of motherhood?"
+
+It was not strange that, in her mental and spiritual extremity, the
+dear old gentlewoman's life-long habit should lead her to kneel
+beside the stranger's bed and pray for understanding and guidance.
+It was significant that she did not ask her God to forgive the lie.
+
+And, presently, as she prayed, she felt the man on the bed move.
+Then a hand lightly touched her hair.  She remained very still for
+a little,--her head still bowed.  The hand that touched so
+reverently the silvery gray hair trembled a little.  Slowly, the
+old teacher raised her face to look at him; and the Irish blue eyes
+of Brian Kent were wide with wondering awe and glowing with a light
+that warmed her heart and strengthened her.
+
+"Why did you do it?" he asked.  "You wonderful, wonderful woman!
+Why did you do it?"
+
+Slowly, she rose from her knees to sit beside him on the bed.  "You
+heard?"
+
+He nodded his head, not trusting himself to speak.
+
+"I was afraid the Sheriff talked too loud," she said.
+
+"But, why did you do it?" he persisted.
+
+"I think it was because I couldn't do anything else," she answered,
+with her little chuckling laugh.  Then she added, seriously:  "How
+could I let them take you away?  Are you not mine?  Did not the
+river bring you to me?"
+
+"I must tell you," he answered, sadly, "that what the detective
+told you about me is true."
+
+"Yes?" she answered, smiling.
+
+"I was a clerk in the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank," he
+continued, "and I stole money,--for nearly a year I stole,--not
+large sums, but a little at a time.  Then, when I knew that it was
+going to be discovered, I took quite a lot, and ran away."
+
+"Yes?" said Auntie Sue.
+
+"Do you not care that I am a thief?" he questioned, wonderingly.
+
+"Oh, yes; I care very much," she returned.  "But, you see, after
+all, your stealing is a little thing that can be made all right.
+Your being a thief is so small in comparison with other things
+which you might have been, but which you are not, and of so little
+importance in comparison with what you really ARE, that I can't
+feel so very bad about it."
+
+"But--but--my drinking,--my condition when--"  He could not go on.
+
+"Why, you see," she answered, "I can't think of THAT man as being
+YOU at all.  THAT was something that the accident of your being a
+thief did to you,--like catching cold, and being sick, after
+accidentally falling in the river."
+
+After a little silence, the man spoke, slowly:  "I suppose every
+thief, when he is caught, says the same thing; but I really never
+wanted to do it.  Circumstances--" he paused, biting his lip, and
+turning away.
+
+"What was she like?" asked Auntie Sue, gently.
+
+"She?" and his face reddened.
+
+"Yes, I have observed that, to a man, 'circumstances' nearly always
+mean a woman.  To a woman, of course, it is a man."
+
+"I cannot tell you about her, now," he said.  "Some day, perhaps,
+when I am further away from it.  But she is not at all like you."
+
+And this answer, for some strange reason, brought a flush of
+pleasure to the face of the old schoolteacher.
+
+"I did not mean for you to tell me now," she returned.  "I only
+wanted you to know that, even though I am an old maid, I can
+understand."
+
+She left him then, and went to attend to her simple household
+duties.
+
+It was not until quite late in the evening that Auntie Sue took up
+the newspaper which Sheriff Knox had given her.  Judy had retired
+to her room, and Brian Burns--as they had agreed he should be
+called--was fast asleep.
+
+To-morrow, Brian was going to sit up.  His clothing had been washed
+and ironed and pressed, and Auntie Sue was making some little
+repairs in the way of darning and buttons.  She had finished, and
+was putting her needle and scissors in the sewing-basket on the
+table beside her, when she noticed the paper, which she had
+forgotten.
+
+The article headed "BANK CLERK DISAPPEARS" was not long.  It told,
+in a matter-of-fact, newspaper way, how Brian Kent had, at
+different times, covering a period of several months, taken various
+sums from the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, and gave, so far as
+was then known, the accumulated amount which he had taken.  The
+dishonest clerk had employed several methods in his operations; but
+the particular incident--read Auntie Sue--which had led to the
+exposure of Kent's stealings was the theft of a small sum of money
+in bank-notes, which had been sent to the bank in a letter by one
+of the bank's smaller depositors.
+
+The newspaper fell from Auntie Sue's hand.  Mechanically, she
+fingered the garment lying in her lap.
+
+She, too, had sent a sum of money in a letter for deposit to her
+small account in this bank from which Brian Kent had stolen.  She
+would not have sent the familiar paper currency of the United
+States that way; but, this money was in Argentine notes.  Her
+brother from far-away Buenos Aires had sent it to her, saying that
+it would help to keep her during the closing years of her life; and
+she had added it to her small savings with a feeling of deepest
+gratitude that her last days were now fully provided for.  And she
+had received from the bank no acknowledgment of her letter with its
+enclosures.
+
+Taking up the paper with hands that trembled so she scarce could
+distinguish the words, she read the paragraph again.
+
+Suddenly, she recalled the man's puzzled expression when she had
+told him her name, and she seemed to hear him say, again,
+"Wakefield?  Wakefield?  Where have I seen that name?"
+
+She looked at the date of the paper.  Beyond all doubt, the man
+sleeping there in the other room;--the man whom she had saved from
+a suicide's end in the river;--whom she had nursed through the hell
+of delirium tremens;--whom she had yearned over as over her own
+son, and for whom, to save from the just penalty of his crime, she
+had lied--beyond all doubt that man had robbed her of the money
+that was to have insured to her peace and comfort in the closing
+years of her life.
+
+Carefully, Auntie Sue laid the garment she had just mended with
+such loving care, with the rest of Brian Kent's clothing, on the
+near-by chair.  Rising, she went with slow, troubled step to the
+porch.
+
+There was no moon, that night, to turn the waters of The Bend into
+a stream of silvery light.  But the stars were shining bright and
+clear, and she could see the river where it made its dark,
+mysterious way between the walls of shadowy hills; and borne to her
+ears on the gentle night wind came the deep, thundering roar of the
+angry waters at Elbow Rock.
+
+For a long time she stood there on the porch looking into the
+night, with the light from the open door of her little house behind
+her; and she felt very lonely, very tired, and very old.  With her
+beautiful old face upturned to the infinite sky, where shining
+worlds are scattered in such lavish profusion, she listened,
+listened to the river that, with its countless and complex
+currents, swept so irresistibly onward along the way that was set
+for it by Him who swung those star-worlds in the limitless space of
+that mighty arch above.  And something of the spirit that broods
+ever over the river must have entered into the soul of Auntie Sue.
+When she turned back into the house, there was a smile on her face,
+though her eyes were wet with tears.
+
+Going to the chair that held Brian Kent's clothing, she took the
+garments in her arms and pressed them to her lips.  Then she
+carried them to his room.
+
+For some time she remained in that darkened chamber beside the
+sleeping man.
+
+When she returned to the living-room, she again took up the
+newspaper.  Very carefully, that her sleeping companions in the
+house might not hear her, she went to the kitchen, the paper in her
+hand.  Very carefully, that no sound should betray her act, she
+burned the paper in the kitchen stove.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+AUNTIE SUE'S PROPOSITION.
+
+
+During the next few days, Brian Kent rapidly regained his strength.
+No one seeing the tall, self-possessed gentleman who sat with
+Auntie Sue on the porch overlooking the river, or strolled about
+the place, could have imagined him the wretchedly repulsive
+creature that Judy had dragged from the eddy so short a time
+before.  And no one,--exempting, perhaps, detective Ross,--would
+have identified this bearded guest of Auntie Sue's as the
+absconding bank clerk for whose arrest a substantial reward was
+offered.
+
+But Mr. Ross had departed from the Ozarks, to report to the Empire
+Consolidated Savings Bank that, to the best of his knowledge and
+belief, Brian Kent had been drowned.  Homer T. Ward, himself, wrote
+Auntie Sue about the case, for the detective had told the bank
+president about his visit to the little log house by the river,
+and the banker knew that his old teacher would wish to hear the
+conclusion of the affair.
+
+The facts upon which the detective based his conclusion that Brian
+Kent was dead, were, first of all, the man's general character,
+temperament, habits, and ambitions,--aside from his thefts from the
+bank,--prior to the time of his exposure and flight, and his known
+mental and physical condition at the time he disappeared from the
+hotel in the little river town of Borden.
+
+The detective reasoned (and there are thousands of cases that could
+be cited to support his contention) that by such a man as Brian
+Kent,--knowing, as he must have known, the comparative certainty of
+his ultimate arrest and conviction, and being in a mental and
+nervous condition bordering on insanity, as a result of his
+constant brooding over his crime and the excessive drinking to
+which he had resorted for relief,--by such a man, death would
+almost inevitably be chosen rather than a life of humiliation and
+disgrace and imprisonment.
+
+Acting upon the supposition, however, that the man had gone down
+the river in that missing boat, and that the appearance of suicide
+was planned by the fugitive to trick his pursuers, the detectives
+ascertained that he had provided no supplies for a trip down the
+river.  The man would be compelled to seek food.  The mountain
+country through which he must pass was sparsely settled, and for a
+distance that would have taken a boat many days to cover, the
+officers visited every house and cabin and camp on either side of
+the river without finding a trace of the hunted man.  The river had
+been watched night and day.  The net set by the Burns operatives
+touched every settlement and village for many miles around.  And,
+finally, the battered and broken wreck of the lost boat had been
+found some two miles below Elbow Rock.
+
+". . . And so, my dear Auntie Sue," Banker Ward wrote, in
+conclusion, "you may rest in peace, secure in the certainty that my
+thieving bank clerk is not lurking anywhere in your beautiful Ozarks
+to pounce down upon you unawares in your little house beside the
+river.  The man is safely dead.  There is no doubt about it.  I
+regret, more than I can express, that you have been in any way
+disturbed by the affair.  Please think no more about it.
+
+"By the way, you made a great impression upon detective Ross.  He
+was more than enthusiastic over your graciousness and your beauty.
+I never heard him talk so much before in all the years I have known
+him.  Needless to say, I indorsed everything he said about the
+dearest old lady in the world, and then we celebrated by dining
+together and drinking a toast to Auntie Sue. . . ."
+
+Auntie Sue went with the letter to Brian, and acquainted him with
+that part of the banker's communication which related to the
+absconding clerk; but, about her relation to the president of the
+Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, she said nothing.
+
+"Isn't it splendid!" she finished, her face glowing with delight.
+
+"Splendid?" he echoed, looking at her with grave, questioning eyes.
+
+"Why, yes, of course!" she returned.  "Aren't you glad to be so
+dead, under the circumstances?  Think what it means!  You are free,
+now.  No horrid old detectives dogging your steps, or waiting
+behind every bush and tree to pounce upon you.  There is nothing,
+now, to prevent your being the kind of man that you always meant to
+be,--and really ARE, too,--except for your--your accidental tumble
+in the river," she finished with her low chuckling laugh.  "And,
+some day," she went on, with conviction, "when you have established
+yourself,--when you have asserted your REAL self, I mean,--and have
+paid back every penny of the money, Homer T. Ward and Mr. Ross and
+everybody will be glad that they didn't catch you before you had a
+chance to save yourself."
+
+"And you, Auntie Sue?"  Brian's voice was deep with feeling:  "And
+you?"
+
+"Me?  Oh, I am as glad, now, as I can ever be, because, you see, to
+me it is already done."
+
+For a long minute he looked at her without speaking, then turned
+his face away to gaze out over the river and the hills; but his
+eyes were the eyes of one who looks without seeing.
+
+Slowly, he said:  "I wish I could be sure.  There was a time when I
+was--when I believed in myself.  It seems to me, now, that it was
+years and years ago.  I thought, then, that nothing could shake me
+in my purpose; that nothing could check me in my ambition.  I saw
+myself going straight on to the goal I had set for myself as
+certainly as--well, as your river ever there goes on to the sea.
+But now--"  He shook his head sadly.
+
+Auntie Sue laughed.  "You foolish boy.  My river out there doesn't
+go straight at all.  It meets all sorts of obstacles, and is beset
+by all sorts of conflicting influences, and so is forced to wind
+and twist and work its way along; but, the big, splendid thing
+about the river is that it keeps going on.  It never stops to turn
+back.  No matter what happens to it, it never stops.  It goes on
+and on and on unto the very end, until it finally loses itself in
+the triumph of its own achievement,--the sea."
+
+"And you think that I can go on?" he asked, doubtingly.
+
+"I know you can go on," she answered with conviction.
+
+"But, why are you so sure?"
+
+"Perhaps," she returned, smiling, "seventy years makes one sure of
+some things."
+
+Ho exclaimed passionately:  "But you do not know--you cannot know--
+how my life, my dreams, my plans, my hopes, my--everything--has
+been broken into bits!"
+
+She answered calmly, pointing to Elbow Rock:  "Look there, Brian.
+See how the river is broken into bits.  See how its smoothly
+flowing, onward sweep is suddenly changed to wild, chaotic turmoil;
+how it rages and fumes and frets and smashes itself against the
+rocks.  But it goes on just the same.  Life cannot be always calm
+and smoothly flowing like the peaceful Bend.  But life can always
+go on.  Life must always go on.  And you will find, my dear boy,
+that a little way below Elbow Rock there is another quiet stretch."
+
+When he spoke again there was a note of almost reverence in his
+voice.
+
+"Auntie Sue, was there ever a break in your life?  Were your dreams
+and plans ever smashed into bits?"
+
+For a little, she did not answer; then she said, bravely:  "Yes,
+Brian; several times.  Once,--years and years ago,--I do not know
+how I managed to go on.  I felt, then, as you feel now; but,
+somehow, I managed, and so found the calm places.  The last hard
+spot came quite recently."  She paused, wondering what he would do
+if she were to tell him how he himself had made the hard spot.
+"But, now," she continued, "I am hoping that the rest of the way
+will be calm and untroubled."
+
+"I wish I could help to make it so!" he cried impulsively.
+
+"Why, you can," she returned quickly.  "Of course you can.  Perhaps
+that is why the current landed your boat at my garden, instead of
+carrying you on down the rapids to Elbow Rock.  Who can say?"
+
+A new light kindled in the man's eyes as his sensitive nature took
+fire at Auntie Sue's words.  "I could do anything for a woman like
+you, Auntie Sue," he said quietly, but with a conviction that left
+no room for doubt.  "But you must tell me what I am to do."
+
+She answered:  "You are simply to go on with your life--just as if
+no Elbow Rock had ever disturbed you; just as the river goes on--to
+the end."
+
+She left him, then, to think out his problem alone; for the teacher
+of so many years' experience was too wise not to know when a lesson
+was finished.
+
+But when the end of the day was come, they again sat together on
+the porch and watched the miracle of the sunset hour.  And no word
+was spoken by them, now, of life and its problems and its meanings.
+As one listens to the song of a bird without thought of musical
+notes or terms; as one senses the fragrance of a flower without
+thought of the chemistry of perfume; as one feels the presence of
+spring in the air without thought of the day of the week, so they
+were conscious of the beauty, the glory, and the peace of the
+evening.
+
+Only when the soft darkness of the night lay over the land, and
+river and mountain and starry sky were veiled in dreamy mystery,
+did Auntie Sue speak:  "Oh, it is so good to have some one to share
+it with,--some one who understands.  I am very lonely, sometimes,
+Brian.  I wonder if you know?"
+
+"Yes, Auntie Sue, I know, for I have been lonely, too."
+
+And so the old gentlewoman, whose lifework was so nearly finished,
+and the man in the flush of his manhood years, whose life had been
+so nearly wrecked, were drawn very close by a something that came
+to them out of the beauty and the mystery of that hour.
+
+The next day, Brian told Auntie Sue that he would leave on the
+morrow.
+
+"Leave?" she echoed in dismay.  "Why, Brian, where are you going?"
+
+"I don't exactly know," he returned; "but, of course, I must go
+somewhere, out into the world again."
+
+"And why must you 'go somewhere, out into the world again'?" she
+demanded.
+
+"To work," he answered, smiling.  "If I am to go on, as you say, I
+must go where I can find something to do."
+
+"If that isn't just like you--you child!" cried the old teacher.
+"You are all alike,--you boys and girls.  You all must have
+something to do; always, it is 'something to do'."
+
+"Well," he returned, "and must we not have something to do?"
+
+"You will do something, certainly," she answered; "but, before you
+can DO anything that is worth doing, you must BE something.  Life
+isn't DOING;--it is BEING."
+
+"I wonder if that was not the real reason for my wretched failures,"
+said Brian, thoughtfully.
+
+"It is the real reason for most of our failures," she returned.
+"And so you are not going to fail again.  You are not going away
+somewhere, you don't know where, to do something you don't know
+what.  You are going to stay right here, and just BE something.
+Then, when the time comes, you will do whatever is yours to do as
+naturally and as inevitably as the birds sing, as the blossoms come
+in the spring, or as the river finds its way to the sea."
+
+And more than ever Brian Kent felt in the presence of Auntie Sue as
+a little boy to whom the world had grown suddenly very big and very
+wonderful.
+
+But, after a while, he shook his head, smiling wistfully.  "No, no,
+Auntie Sue, that sounds all true and right enough, but it can't be.
+I must go just the same."
+
+"Why can't it be, Brian?"
+
+"For one thing," he returned, "I cannot risk the danger to you.
+After all, as long as I am living, there is a chance that my
+identity will be discovered, and you--no, no; I must not!"
+
+"As for that," she answered quickly, "the chances of your being
+identified are a thousand times greater if you go into the world
+again too soon.  Some day, of course, you must go; but you are
+safer now right here.  And"--she added quickly--"it would be no
+easier for me, dear boy, to--to--have it happen somewhere away from
+me.  You are mine, you know, no matter where you go."
+
+"But, Auntie Sue," he protested, "I am not a gentleman of means
+that I can do nothing indefinitely; neither am I capable of living
+upon your hospitality for an extended period.  I must earn my bread
+and butter."
+
+The final sentence came with such a lifting of his head, such a
+look of stern decision, and such an air of pride, that the gentle
+old school-teacher laughed until her eyes were filled with tears;
+and Judy, at the crack in the kitchen door, wondered if the
+mistress of the little log house by the river were losing her mind.
+
+"Oh, Brian! Brian!" cried Auntie Sue, wiping her eyes.  "I knew you
+would come to the 'bread and butter' at last.  That is where all
+our philosophies and reasonings and arguments come at last, don't
+they?  Just 'bread and butter,' that is all.  And I love you for
+it.  Of course you can't live upon my hospitality,--and I couldn't
+let you if you would.  And if you WOULD, I wouldn't let you if I
+could.  I am no more a lady of means, my haughty sir, than you are
+a gentleman of independent fortune.  The fact is, Brian, dear, I
+suspect that you and I are about the two poorest people in the
+world,--to be anything like as pretentiously respectable and
+properly proud as we are."
+
+When the man could make no reply, but only looked at her with a
+much-puzzled and still-proud expression, she continued, half-
+laughingly, but well pleased with him:  "Please, Brian, don't look
+so haughtily injured.  I had no intention of insulting you by
+offering charity.  Far from it."
+
+Instantly, the man's face changed.  He put out his hands
+protestingly, and his blue eyes filled, as he said, impulsively.
+"Auntie Sue, after what you have done for me, I--"
+
+She answered quickly:  "We are considering the future.  What has
+been, is past.  Our river is already far beyond that point in its
+journey.  Don't let us try to turn the waters back.  I promise you
+I am going to be very, very practical, and make you pay for
+EVERYTHING."
+
+Smiling, now, he waited for her to explain.
+
+"I must tell you, first," she began, "that, except for a very small
+amount in the--in a savings bank, I have nothing to provide for my
+last days except this little farm."
+
+"What a shame," Brian Kent exclaimed, "that a woman like you can
+give her life to the public schools for barely enough salary to
+keep her alive during her active years, and then left in her old
+age with no means of support.  It is a national disgrace."
+
+Auntie Sue chuckled with appreciation of the rather grim humor of
+the situation.  What would Brian Kent, indignant at the public
+neglect of the school-teacher, say of the man who had robbed her of
+the money that was to provide for her closing years?  "After all,
+most public sins are only individual sins at the last," she said,
+musingly.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Brian, not in the least seeing the
+relevancy of her words.
+
+Auntie Sue came quickly back to her subject:  "Only thirty acres of
+my little farm is under cultivation.  The remaining fifty acres is
+wild timberland.  If I could have that fifty acres also in
+cultivation, with the money that the timber would bring,--which
+would not be a great deal,--I would be fairly safe for the--for the
+rest of my evening," she finished with a smile.  "Do you see?"
+
+"You mean that I--that you want me to stay here and work for you?"
+
+"I mean," she answered, "that, if you choose to stay for awhile,
+you need not feel that you would be accepting my hospitality as
+charity," she returned gently.  "I am not exactly offering you a
+job: I am only showing you how you could, without sacrificing your
+pride, remain in this quiet retreat for awhile before returning to
+the world."
+
+"It would be heaven, Auntie Sue," he returned earnestly.  "I want
+to stay so bad that I fear myself.  Let me think it over until to-
+morrow.  Let me be sure that I am doing the right thing, and not
+merely the thing I want to do."
+
+She liked his answer, and did not mention the subject again until
+Brian himself was ready.  And, strangely enough, it was poor,
+twisted Judy who helped him to set matters straight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+BRIAN KENT DECIDES.
+
+
+Brian had walked along the river-bank below the house to a spot
+just above the point where the high bluff jutting out into the
+river-channel forms Elbow Rock.
+
+The bank here is not so high above the roaring waters of the
+rapids, for the spur of the mountain which forms the cliff lies at
+a right angle to the river, and the greater part of the cliff is
+thus on the shore, with its height growing less and less as it
+merges into the main slope of the mountain-side.  From the turn in
+the road, in front of the house, a footpath leads down the bank of
+the river to the cliff, and, climbing stairlike up the face of the
+steep bluff, zigzags down the easier slope of the down-river side,
+to come again into the road below.  The road itself, below Elbow
+Rock, is forced by the steep side of the mountain-spur and the
+precipitous bluff to turn inland from the river, and so, climbing
+by an easier grade up past Tom Warden's place, crosses the ridge
+above the schoolhouse, and comes back down the mountain again in
+front of Auntie Sue's place, to its general course along the
+stream.  The little path forms thus a convenient short cut for any
+one following the river road on foot.
+
+Brian, seated on the river-bank a little way from the path where it
+starts up the bluff, was trying to decide whether it would be
+better for him to follow his desire and stay with Auntie Sue for a
+few weeks or months, or whether he should not, in spite of the land
+he might clear for her, return to the world where he could more
+quickly earn the money to pay back that which he had stolen.
+
+And as he sat there, the man was conscious that he had reached one
+of those turning-points that are found in every life where results,
+momentous and far-reaching, are dependent upon comparatively
+unimportant and temporary issues.  He could not have told why, and
+yet he felt a certainty that, for him, two widely separated futures
+were dependent upon his choice.  Nor could he, by thinking,
+discover what those futures held for him, nor which he should
+choose.  Even as his boat that night had hung on the edge of the
+eddy,--hesitating on the dividing-line between the two currents,--
+so the man himself now felt the pull of his life-currents, and
+hesitated,--undecided.
+
+Looking toward the house, he thought how like the life offered by
+Auntie Sue was to the quiet waters of The Bend, and--his mind
+finished the simile--how like the life to which he would go was to
+the rapids at Elbow Rock; and, yet, he reflected, the waters could
+never reach the sea without enduring the turmoil of the rapids.
+And, again, the thought came, "The Bend is just as much the river
+as the troubled passage around the rock."
+
+When he had given up life, and, to all intent and purpose, had left
+life behind him, the river, without his will or knowledge, had
+mysteriously elected to save him from the death he had chosen as
+his only refuge from the utter ruin that had seemed so inevitable.
+As the currents of the river had carried his boat to the eddy at
+the foot of Auntie Sue's garden, the currents of life had
+mysteriously brought him to the saving influence of Auntie Sue
+herself.  Should he push out again into the stream to face the
+danger he knew beset such a course? or should he wait for a season
+in the secure calm of the harbor she offered until he were
+stronger?  Brian Kent knew, instinctively, that there was in the
+wisdom and love of Auntie Sue's philosophy and faith a strength
+that would, if he could make it his, insure his safe passage
+through every danger of life, and yet--
+
+The man's meditations were interrupted by a chance look toward the
+bluff which towered above him.
+
+Judy was climbing the steep trail.
+
+Curiously, Brian watched the deformed mountain girl as she made her
+way up the narrow, stairlike path, and her cutting words came back
+to him:  "God-A'mighty and my drunken pap made me like I am.  But
+you,--damn you!--you made yourself what you be."  And Auntie Sue
+had said that the all-important thing in life was not to DO
+something, but to BE something.
+
+The girl, who had gained a point halfway to the top of the bluff,
+paused to look searchingly about, and Brian, who was half-hidden by
+the bushes, started to call to her, thinking she might be looking
+for him; but some impulse checked him and he remained silently
+watching her.  Climbing hurriedly a little higher up the path Judy
+again stopped to look carefully around, as if searching the
+vicinity for some one.  Then, once more, she went on until she
+stood on top of the cliff; and now, as she looked about over the
+surrounding country, she called:  "Mr. Burns!  Oh, Mr. Burns!
+Who-o-e-e!  Mr. Burns!"
+
+Brian's lips were parted to answer the call when something happened
+on top of the bluff which held him for the moment speechless.
+
+From beyond where Judy stood on the brink of the cliff, a man's
+head and shoulders appeared.  Brian saw the girl start and turn to
+face the newcomer as if in sudden fear.  Then she whirled about to
+run.  Before she could gain the point where the path starts down
+from the top, the man caught her and dragged her roughly back, so
+that the two disappeared from Brian's sight.  Brian was halfway up
+the bluff when he heard the girl's shrill scream.
+
+There was no sign of weakness, now, in the man that Judy had
+dragged from the river.  He covered the remaining distance to the
+top in a breath.  From among the bushes, a little way down the
+mountainside, came the sound of an angry voice mingled with Judy's
+pleading cries.
+
+An instant more, and Brian reached the spot where poor Judy was
+crouching on the ground, begging the brute, who stood over her with
+menacing fists, not to hit her again.
+
+The man was a vicious-looking creature, dressed in the rough garb
+of the mountaineer; dirty and unkempt, with evil, close-set eyes,
+and a scraggly beard that could not hide the wicked, snarling
+mouth.
+
+He stood for a second looking at Brian, as if too surprised by the
+latter's sudden appearance to move; then he went down, felled by as
+clean a knockout as was ever delivered by an Irish fist.
+
+"Are you hurt, Judy?" demanded Brian, as he lifted the girl to her
+feet.  "Did he strike you?"
+
+"He was sure a-fixin' ter lick me somethin' awful when you-all put
+in," returned the poor girl, trembling with fear.  "I know, 'cause
+he's done hit to me heaps er times before.  He's my pap."
+
+"Your father!" exclaimed Brian.
+
+Judy nodded;--then screamed:  "Look out!  He'll git you, sure!"
+
+Judy's rescuer whirled, to see the man on the ground drawing a gun.
+A vigorous, well-directed kick, delivered in the nick of time, sent
+the gun whirling away into the bushes and rendered the native's
+right arm useless.
+
+"Get up!" commanded Brian.
+
+The man rose to his feet, and stood nursing his damaged wrist and
+scowling at Judy's companion.
+
+"Are you this girl's father?"
+
+"I reckon I am," came the sullen reply.  "I'm Jap Taylor, an' you-
+all are sure goin' to find that you can't come between a man an'
+his lawful child in these here mountains, mister,--if you-all be
+from the city."
+
+"And you will find that you can't strike a crippled girl in my
+presence, even if she is your daughtcr,--in these mountains or
+anywhere else," retorted Brian.  "What are you trying to do with
+her, anyway?"
+
+"I aim ter take her back home with me, where she belongs."
+
+"Well, why didn't you go to the house for her like a man, instead
+of jumping on her out here in the woods!"
+
+"Hit ain't none of your dad burned business as I can see," came the
+sullen reply.
+
+"I am making it my business, just the same," returned Brian.
+
+He turned to the girl, who had drawn back a little behind him.
+"Judy," he said, kindly, "I think perhaps you better tell me about
+this."
+
+"Pap, he was a-layin' for me in the bresh 'cause he dassn't come to
+the house ter git me," said the girl, fearfully.
+
+"But, why does he fear to come to the house?" persisted Brian.
+
+"'Cause he done give me ter Auntie Sue."
+
+"Gave you to Auntie Sue?" repeated the puzzled Brian.
+
+Jap Taylor interrupted with, "I didn't sign ary paper, an'--"
+
+"Shut up, you!" snapped Brian.  "Go on, Judy."
+
+"Hit was a year last corn-plantin'," explained the girl.  "My maw,
+she died.  He used ter whip her, too.  An' Auntie Sue was there
+helpin' weuns; an' Tom Warden an' some other folks they was there,
+too; an' they done fixed hit so that I was ter go an' live with
+Auntie Sue; an' pap, he give me ter her.  He sure did, Mr. Burns,
+an' I ain't a-wantin' ter go with him, no more."
+
+The poor girl's shrill monotone broke, and her twisted body shook
+with her sobs.
+
+"I didn't sign ary paper," repeated Judy's father, with sullen
+stubbornness.  "An' what's more, I sure ain't a-goin' ter.  I 'lows
+as how she'll just go home an' work for me, like she ort, 'stead of
+livin' with that there old-maid schoolma'am.  I'm her paw, I am,
+an' I reckon I got rights."
+
+He started toward the girl, who drew closer to Brian, and begged
+piteously:  "Don't let him tech me!  'Fore God, Mr. Burns, he'll
+kill me, sure!"
+
+Brian drew the girl behind him as he faced the father with a brief,
+"Get out!"
+
+The mountaineer hesitated.
+
+Brian went one step toward him:  "Do you hear?  Get out!  And if
+you ever show your dirty face in this vicinity again, I'll not
+leave a whole bone in your worthless carcass!"
+
+And Jap Taylor saw something in those Irish blue eyes that caused
+him to start off down the mountain toward the river below Elbow
+Rock.
+
+When he had placed a safe distance between himself and the man who
+appeared so willing and able to make good his threat, Judy's father
+turned, and, shaking his uninjured fist at Brian, delivered a
+volley of curses, with:  "I'll sure git you-all for this!  Jap
+Taylor ain't a-lettin' no man come between him an' his'n.  I'll fix
+you, an' I'll fix that there schoolma'am, too!  She's nothin' but a
+damned old--"
+
+But Brian started toward him, and Jap Taylor beat a hasty retreat.
+
+"Never mind, Judy," said Brian, when the native had disappeared in 
+the brush and timber that covered the steep mountain-side.  "I'll
+not let him touch you.  Come, let us sit down and talk a little
+until you are yourself again.  Auntie Sue must not see you like
+this.  We don't want to let her know anything about it.  You won't
+tell her, will you?"
+
+"I ain't aimin' ter tell nobody," said Judy, between sobs.  "I sure
+ain't a-wantin' ter make no trouble,--not for Auntie Sue, nohow.
+She's been powerful good ter me."
+
+When they were seated on convenient rocks at the brink of the cliff
+overlooking the river, Judy gradually ceased crying, and presently
+said, in her normal, querulous monotone:  "Did you-all mind what
+pap 'lowed he'd do ter Auntie Sue, Mr. Burns?"
+
+"Yes, Judy; but don't worry, child.  He is not going to harm any
+one while I am around."
+
+"You-all are aimin' ter stay then, be you?  I'm sure powerful
+glad," said Judy, simply.
+
+Brian started.  A new factor had suddenly been injected into his
+problem.
+
+"I was powerful scared you-all was aimin' ter go away," continued
+Judy.  "Hit was that I was a-huntin' you-all to tell you 'bout,
+when pap he ketched me."
+
+"What were you going to tell me, Judy?"
+
+"I 'lowed ter tell you-all 'bout Auntie Sue.  She'd sure be
+powerful mad if she know'd I'd said anythin' ter you, but she's
+a-needin' somebody like you ter help her, mighty bad.  She--she's
+done lost a heap of money, lately: hit was some she sent--"
+
+Brian interrupted:  "Wait a minute, Judy.  You must not tell me
+anything about Auntie Sue's private affairs; you must not tell any
+one.  Anything she wants me to know, she will tell me.  Do you
+understand?" he finished with a reassuring smile.
+
+"Yes, sir; I reckon you-all are 'bout right, an' I won't tell
+nobody nothin'.  But 'tain't a-goin' ter hurt none ter say as how
+you-all ort ter stay, I reckon."
+
+"And why do you think I ought to stay, Judy?"
+
+"'Cause of what Auntie Sue's done for you-all,--a-nursin' you when
+you was plumb crazy an' plumb dangerous from licker, an' a lyin'
+like she did ter the Sheriff an' that there deteckertive man,"
+returned Judy stoutly; "an' 'cause she's so old an' is a-needin'
+you-all ter help her; an' 'cause she is a-lovin' you like she does,
+an' is a-wantin' you-all ter stay so bad hit's mighty nigh a-makin'
+her plumb sick."
+
+Brian Kent did not answer.  The mountain girl's words had revealed
+to him the selfishness of his own consideration of his problem so
+clearly that he was stunned.  Why had he not, in his thinking,
+remembered the dear old gentlewoman who had saved him from a
+shameful death?
+
+Judy went on:  "Hit looks ter me like somebody just naturally's got
+ter take care of Auntie Sue, Mr. Burns.  All her whole life she's
+a-been takin' care of everybody just like she tuck me, an' just
+like she tuck you-all, besides a heap of other ways; an' now she's
+so old and mighty nigh plumb wore out, hit sure looks like hit was
+time somebody was a-fixin' ter do somethin' for her.  That was what
+I was a-huntin' you-all ter tell you when pap ketched me, Mr.
+Burns."
+
+"I am glad you told me, Judy;--very glad.  You see, I was not
+thinking of things in just that way."
+
+"I 'lowed maybe you mightn't.  Seems like folks mostly don't."
+
+"But it's all right, now!" Brian cried heartily.  "You have settled
+it.  I'll stay.  We'll take care of Auntie Sue,--you and I, Judy.
+Come on, now; let's go to the house, and tell her.  But we won't
+say anything about your father, Judy;--that would only make her
+unhappy; and we must never make Auntie Sue unhappy--never."  He was
+as eager and enthusiastic, now, as a schoolboy.
+
+"'Course," said Judy, solemnly; "'course you just naturally got ter
+stay an' take care of her now, after what pap's done said he'd do."
+
+"Yes, Judy; I've just naturally got to stay," returned Brian.
+
+Together they went down the steep cliff trail and to the little log
+house by the river to announce Brian's decision to Auntie Sue.
+They found the dear old lady in her favorite spot on the porch
+overlooking the river.
+
+"Why, of course you will stay," she returned, when Brian had told
+her.  "The river brought you to me, and you know, my dear boy, the
+river is never wrong.  Oh, yes, I know there are cross-currents and
+crooked spots and sand-bars and rocks and lots of places where it
+SEEMS to us to be wrong.  But, just the same, it all goes on, all
+the time, toward the sea for which it starts when it first begins
+at some little spring away over there somewhere in the mountains.
+Of course you will stay with me, Brian,--until the river carries
+you on again."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+RE-CREATION.
+
+
+From the very day of his decision, to which he had been so
+unexpectedly helped by Judy, Brian Kent was another man.  The
+gloomy, despondent, undecided spirit that was the successor of the
+wretched creature that Judy had helped to Auntie Sue's that morning
+was now succeeded by a cheerful, hopeful, contented man, who went
+to his daily task with a song, did his work with a smile and a
+merry jest, and returned, when the day was done, with peace in his
+heart and laughter on his lips.
+
+As the days of the glorious Ozark autumn passed, Brian's healthful,
+outdoor work on the timbered mountain-side brought to the man of
+the cities a physical grace and beauty he had lacked,--the grace of
+physical strength and the beauty of clean and rugged health.  The
+bright autumn sun and the winds that swept over the many miles of
+tree-clad hills browned his skin; while his work with the ax
+developed his muscles and enforced deep breathing of the bracing
+mountain air, thus bringing a more generous supply of richer blood,
+which touched his now firmly rounded cheeks with color.
+
+The gift of humor and the faculty of quaint and witty conversational
+twists, with the genius of storytelling that was his from his Irish
+mother, made quick friends for him of the mountain neighbors who
+welcomed this new pupil of their old school-teacher with whole-
+hearted pleasure, and quoted his jests and sayings throughout the
+country with never-failing delight.  And Judy,--it is not too much
+to say that Judy became his most ardent admirer and devoted slave.
+
+But the dear old mistress of the little log house by the river
+alone recognized that these outward changes in the human wreck that
+the river had brought to her were but manifestations of a more
+potent transformation that was taking place in the man's inner
+life; and it was this inner change that filled the teacher's loving
+heart with joy, and which she watched with keen and delighted
+interest.
+
+It was not, after all, a new life that was coming to this man,
+Auntie Sue told herself; it was his own old and more real life that
+was reassuring itself.  It was the real Brian Kent that had been
+sojourning in a far country that was now coming home to his own.
+It was the wealth of his heart and mind and soul which had been
+deep-buried under an accumulation of circumstances and environment
+that was now being brought to the surface.
+
+Might it not be that Auntie Sue's genius for absorbing beauty and
+making truth her own had, in her many years of searching for truth
+and beauty in whatever humanity she encountered, developed in her a
+peculiar sensitiveness?  And was it not this that had made her feel
+instinctively the real nature of the man in whom a less discerning
+observer would have recognized nothing worthy of admiration or
+regard?  Without question, it was the true,--the essential,--the
+underlying,--elements in the character of the absconding bank clerk
+that had aroused in this remarkable old gentlewoman the peculiar
+sense of kinship--of possession--that had determined her attitude
+toward the stranger.  The law that like calls to like is not less
+applicable to things spiritual than to things material.  The birds
+of a feather that always flock together are not of necessity
+material birds of material feathers.
+
+Nor was Brian Kent himself unconscious of his Re-Creation.  The man
+knew what he was, as every man knows deep within himself the real
+self that is.  And that was the horror of the situation which had
+set him adrift on the river that night when, in his last drunken
+despairing frenzy, he had left the world with a curse in his heart
+and had faced the black unknown with reckless laughter and a
+profane toast.  It is to be doubted if there can be a hell of
+greater torment than that experienced by one who, endowed by nature
+with a capacity for great living, is betrayed by the very strength
+of his genius into a situation that is intolerable of his real
+self, and is forced, thus, to a continuous self-crucifixion and
+death.
+
+In his new environment the man felt the awakening of this self
+which he had mourned as dead.  Thoughts, emotions, dreams,
+aspirations, which had, as he believed, been killed, he found were
+not dead, but only sleeping; and in the quickening of their
+vitality and strength he knew a joy as great as had been his
+despair.
+
+The beauty of nature, that had lost its power of appeal to his
+sodden soul, now stirred him to the very depth of his being.  The
+crisp, sun-sweet air of the autumn mornings, when he went forth
+with his ax to the day's clean labor, was a draught of potent magic
+that set every nerve of him tingling with delight.  The woodland
+hillside, where he worked, was a wonderland of beautiful creations
+that inspired a thousand glowing fancies.  Sometimes, at his heavy
+task, he would pause for a moment's rest, and so would look out and
+away over the vast expanse of country that from his feet stretched
+in all its charm of winding river and wooded slopes, and tree-
+fringed ridges to the far, blue sky-line; and the very soul of him
+would answer to the call as he had thought he never could answer
+again.  The very clouds that drifted past on their courses to
+unseen ports beyond the hills were freighted with meaning for him
+now.  The winds that came laden with the subtly blended perfume of
+ten thousand varieties of trees and grasses and shrubs and flowers
+whispered words of life which he now could hear.  The loveliness of
+the glowing morning skies, as he saw them when he rose for the
+day's work, and the glories of the sunsets, as he watched them with
+Auntie Sue from the porch when the day's task was accomplished,
+filled him with an exquisite gladness which he had never hoped to
+know again.
+
+Most of all, did the river speak to him; not, indeed, as it had
+spoken that dreadful night, when, from the window of his darkened
+room, he had listened to its call: the river spoke, now, in the
+full day as his eye followed its winding length through the hills
+in all its varied beauty of sunshine and shadow;--of gleaming
+silver and living green and russet-brown.  It talked to him in the
+evening when the waters gave back the glories of the sky and the
+deepening twilight wrapped the world in its dusky veil of mystery.
+It spoke to him in the soft darkness of the night, as it swept on
+its way under the stars, or in the light of the golden moon.  And,
+in time, some of these things which the river said to him, he, in
+turn, told to Auntie Sue.
+
+And Auntie Sue, delighted with the man's awakening self, and
+charmed with his power of thought and his gift of expression, led
+him on.  With artful suggestion and skilful question and subtle
+argument, she stimulated his mind and fancy to lay hold of the
+truths and beauties that life and nature offered.  But ever the
+rare old gentlewoman was his teacher, revealing himself to himself;
+guiding him to a fuller discovery and knowledge of his own life and
+its meaning, which, indeed, is the true aim and end of all right
+teaching.
+
+So the days of the autumn passed.  The hills changed their robes of
+varied green for costumes of brown and gold, with touches here and
+there of flaming scarlet and brilliant yellow.  And then winter was
+at hand, and that momentous evening came when Auntie Sue said to
+her pupil, after an hour of most interesting talk, "Brian, why in
+the world don't you write a book?"
+
+"'A book'!" exclaimed Brian, in a startled tone.
+
+Judy laughed.  "He sure ought ter.  Lord knows he talks like one."
+
+"I am in earnest, Brian," said Auntie Sue, her lovely old eyes
+shining with enthusiasm and her gentle voice trembling with
+excitement.  "I have been thinking about it for a long time, now,
+and, to-night, I just can't keep it to myself any longer.  Why
+don't you give to the world some of the thoughts you have been
+wasting on Judy and me?"
+
+"Hit's sure been a-wastin' of 'em on me," agreed Judy.  "'Fore God,
+I don't sense what he's a-talkin' 'bout, more'n half the time."
+
+Brian laughed.  "Judy is prophetic, Auntie Sue.  She voices
+perfectly the sentiment of the world toward any book I might
+write."
+
+Auntie Sue detected a note of bitterness underlying the laughing
+comment, and wondered.
+
+Judy spoke again as she arose to retire to her room for the night:
+"I reckon as how there's a right smart of things youuns talk that'd
+be mighty fine if a body only had the learnin' ter sense 'em.  An'
+there must be heaps of folks where youuns come from what would know
+Mr. Burns's meaning if he was to write hit all out plain.
+Everybody ain't like me.  Hit's sure a God's-blessin' they ain't,
+too."
+
+"And there, Brian, dear, is your answer," said Auntie Sue, as Judy
+left the room.  "Any book has meaning only for those who have the
+peculiar sympathy and understanding needed to interpret it.  A book
+that means nothing to one may be rich in meaning for another.
+Every writer writes for his own peculiar readers, just as every
+individual has his own peculiar friends."
+
+"Or enemies," said Brian.
+
+"Or enemies," agreed Auntie Sue.
+
+Brian went to the window, and stood for some time, looking out into
+the night.  Then turning, with a nervous gesture, he paced uneasily
+up and down the room; while Auntie Sue watched him in silence with
+an expression of loving concern on her dear old face.
+
+At last, she spoke:  "Why, Brian, what is the matter?  What have I
+said?  I did not mean to upset you like this.  Come, sit down here,
+and tell me about it.  What is it troubles you so?"
+
+With a short laugh, Brian came and stood before her.  "I suppose it
+had to come sooner or later, Auntie Sue.  I have been trying for
+days to muster up courage enough to tell you about it.  You have
+touched the one biggest thing in my life."
+
+"Why, what do you mean, Brian?"
+
+"I mean just what we have been talking about,--writing," answered
+Brian.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, with quick and delighted triumph.  "Then I AM
+right.  You have been thinking about it, too."
+
+"Thinking about it!" he echoed, and in his voice she felt the
+nervous intensity of his mood.  "I have thought of nothing else.
+All day long when I am at work, I am writing, writing, writing.  It
+is the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep.  I dream about it
+all night.  And, it is the first thing I think about in the
+morning."
+
+Auntie Sue clasped her hands to her heart with an exclamation of
+joyous interest.
+
+Brian, with a quiet smile at her enthusiasm, went on:  "I know
+exactly what I want to say, and why I want to say it.  There is a
+world of people, Auntie Sue, whose lives have been broken and
+spoiled by one thing or another, and who have more or less cut
+themselves loose from everything, and are just drifting, they don't
+care a hang where, because they think they have failed so
+completely that there is nothing more in life for them.  People
+like me,--I don't mean thieves and criminals necessarily,--who have
+had that which they know to be the best and biggest and truest part
+of themselves tortured and warped and twisted and denied and
+smashed and beaten and betrayed and killed; and who, because they
+feel that their real selves are dead within them, don't care what
+happens to that part which is left."
+
+He was walking the floor again now, and speaking with a depth of
+feeling which he had never before revealed to his gentle companion.
+
+"It is not so much the love of wrong-doing that makes people turn
+bad,"--he continued,--"it is having their real selves misunderstood
+and doubted and smothered and their realest loves and dreams and
+aspirations never recognized, or else distorted and twisted and
+made to appear as something they hate.  I want to make the people--
+and there are many thousands of them--who are suffering in the
+living hell that tormented me, feel that I know and understand.
+And then, Auntie Sue, then I want to tell them about you and your
+river.
+
+"I would teach them the things you have taught me.  I would say to
+every one that I could persuade to listen:  'It doesn't in the
+least matter what your experience is, the old river is still going
+on to the sea.  No matter if every woman you ever knew has proved
+untrue, virtuous womanhood still IS.  No matter if every man you
+ever knew has proved false, true manhood still IS.  If every friend
+you ever had has betrayed your friendship, loyal friendship still
+IS.  If you have found nothing in your experience but dishonesty
+and falsehood and infidelity and hypocrisy, it is only because you
+have been unfortunate in your experience; because honesty and
+fidelity and sincerity are existing FACTS.  They are the very
+foundation facts of life, and can no more fail life than the river
+can fail to reach the sea.
+
+"'Your little individual experience, my little individual
+experience,--what are they?  They are nothing more than the tiny
+bubbles, swirls, ripples, and breaks on the surface of the great
+volume of water that flows so inevitably onward.  The bit of foam,
+the tiny wave caused by twig or branch or blade of water-grass, or
+the great rocks and cliffs that make the roaring whirlpools and
+rapids,--do they stay the waters, or turn the river back on its
+course, or in any way prevent its onward flow?  No more can the
+twigs of circumstances, or the boughs of environment, or the
+grasses of accident that make the tiny waves of our individual
+experiences,--or even the great rocks and cliffs of national or
+racial import,--such as wars, and pestilence, and famine,--finally
+check or stay the river of life in its onward flow toward the sea
+of its final and infinite meaning.'"
+
+He went again to the window, and stood looking out into the night
+as though listening to the voices.
+
+"Why, Auntie Sue," he said, turning back to the old gentlewoman,--
+and his face was radiant with the earnestness of this thought,--
+"Auntie Sue, there are as many currents in our river out there as
+there are human lives.  A comparatively few great main or dominant
+currents in the river flow--a comparatively few great dominant
+currents in the river flow of life.  But if you look closer, you
+will see that in each one of those established principal currents
+there are countless thousands--millions--of tiny currents all
+turning and twisting across, and back, and up, and down in every
+direction,--weaving themselves together,--pulling themselves
+apart,--criss-crossing, clashing,--interlacing,--tangled and
+confused,--and these are the individual lives.  And no matter what
+the conflict or confusion; no matter what direction they take for
+the moment, they all, ALL, go to make up the river;--they, all
+together, ARE the river,--and they all together move onward,--
+ceaselessly, inevitably, irresistibly."
+
+He paused to stand smiling down at her, as she sat there in her low
+chair beside the table with the lamplight on her silvery hair,--
+there in the little log house by the river.
+
+"That is what you have made your river mean to me, Auntie Sue; and
+that is what I would give to the world."
+
+With trembling hands, the gentle old teacher reached for her
+handkerchief, which lay in the sewing-basket on the table beside
+her.  Smilingly, she wiped away the tears that filled her eyes.
+Lovingly, she looked up at him,--standing so tall and strong before
+her, with his reddish hair tumbled and tossed, and his Irish blue
+eyes lighted with the fire of his inspiration.
+
+"Well," she said, at last, "why don't you do it, Brian?"
+
+As a breath of air puts out the light of a candle, so the light
+went from Brian Kent's face.  Dropping into his chair, he answered
+hopelessly, "Because I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid?" echoed Auntie Sue, troubled and amazed.  "What in the
+world are you afraid of, Brian?"
+
+And the bitter, bitter answer came, "I am afraid of another
+failure."
+
+Auntie Sue's quick mind caught the significance of his words.
+"ANOTHER failure, Brian?  Then you,--then you have written before?"
+
+"Yes," he returned.  And not since his decision to remain with her
+had she seen him so despondent.  "To write was the dream and the
+passion of my life.  I tried and tried.  God, how I worked and
+slaved at it!  The only result from my efforts was the hell from
+which you dragged me."
+
+Alter a little silence, Auntie Sue said gently:  "I don't think I
+understand, Brian.  You have never told me about your trouble, you
+know."
+
+"It is an old, old story," he returned.  "I am only one of
+thousands.  My wretched experience is not at all uncommon."
+
+"I know," she answered.  "But don't you think that perhaps you had
+better tell me?  Perhaps, in the mere telling of it to me, now that
+it is all over, you may find the real reason for--for what happened
+to you."
+
+Wise Auntie Sue!--wise in that rarest of all wisdom,--the
+sympathetic understanding of human hearts and souls.
+
+"You know about my earlier life," he began; "how, in my boyhood,
+after mother's death, I worked at anything I could do to keep
+myself alive, and how I managed to gain a little schooling.  I was
+always dreaming of writing, even then.  I took the business course
+in a night-school, not because I liked it, but because I thought it
+would help me to earn a living in a way that would give me more
+time for what I really wanted to do.  And after I finished school,
+and had finally worked up to a good position in that bank, I did
+have more time for my writing.  But,"--he hesitated--"I--well,--
+other interests had come into my life,--and--"
+
+Auntie Sue said, softly, "She did not understand, Brian."
+
+"No, she did not understand," he continued, accepting Auntie Sue's
+interpretation without comment.  "And when my writing brought no
+money, because no publisher would accept my stuff, and the
+conditions under which I wrote became intolerable because of
+misunderstanding and opposition and disbelief in my ability and
+charges of neglect, I--I--stole money from my employers to gain
+temporary relief until my writing should amount to something.  You
+see, I could not help believing that I would succeed, in time.  I
+suppose all dreamers have more or less confidence in their dreams:
+they must, you know, or their dreams would never be realized.  I
+always expected to pay back the money I took with the money I would
+earn by my pen.  But I failed to earn anything, you see; and then--
+then the inevitable happened, and the river brought me to you."
+
+"But, my dear boy!" cried Auntie Sue, "all this that you have told
+me is no reason why you should fear to write now.  Indeed, it is a
+very good reason why you should not fear."
+
+He looked at her questioningly, and she continued:  "You have given
+every reason in the world why you failed.  Your whole life was out
+of tune.  How could you expect to produce anything worthy from such
+a jangling discord?  You should have been afraid, indeed, to write
+THEN.  But, NOW,--now, Brian, you are ready.  You are a long, long
+way down the river from the place of your failures.  The disturbing,
+distracting things are past,--just as in the quiet reach of the
+river below Elbow Rock the turmoil of the rapids is past.  You say
+that you know exactly what you want to write, and why you want to
+write it--and you do know--and because you know,-- because you have
+suffered,--because you have learned,--because you can do this thing
+for others,--it is yours to do, and so you must do it.  What you
+really mean when you say you are 'afraid to write' is, that you are
+AFRAID NOT TO," she finished with a little laugh of satisfaction.
+
+And Brian Kent, as he watched her glowing face and felt the
+sincerity and confidence that vibrated in her voice, was thrilled
+with a new courage.  The fires of his inspiration shone again in
+his eyes, as he answered, with deep conviction, "Auntie Sue, I
+believe you are right.  What a woman you are!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+AUNTIE SUE TAKES A CHANCE.
+
+
+So Brian wrote his book that winter.
+
+When the days were fair, he worked with his ax on the mountain-
+side.  But his notebook was ever at hand, and many a thought that
+went down on the pages of his manuscript was born while he wrought
+with his hands in the wholesome labor which gave strength to his
+body and clearness to his brain.  In the evenings, he wrote in the
+little log house by the river, with Auntie Sue sitting in her chair
+beside the table,--the lamp-light on her silvery hair, and her
+sewing-basket within reach of her hand,--engaged with some bit of
+needlework, a book, or perhaps with one of her famous letters to
+some other pupil, far away.  The stormy days gave him many hours
+with his pen, and so the book grew.
+
+And always as the man endeavored to shape his thoughts for the
+printed pages that would carry his message to the doubting,
+disconsolate, and fearful world that he knew so well, he heard in
+his heart the voices of the river.  From the hillside where he
+worked in the timber he could see the stream winding through the
+snowy hills like a dark line carelessly drawn with many a crook and
+curve and break on the sheet of white.  From the porch he saw the
+quiet Bend a belt of shining ice and snow, save for a narrow line
+in the centre, which marked the course of the strongest currents;
+while the waters of the rapids crashed black and dreadful against
+the Elbow Rock cliff, which stood gaunt and grim amid the
+surrounding whiteness; and in the deathlike hush of the winter
+twilight, the roar of the turmoil sounded with persistent menace.
+And all that the river said to him he put down,--so far as it was
+given him to do.
+
+And that which Brian Kent wrote was good.  He knew it--in his
+deepest, truest self he knew.  And Auntie Sue knew it; for, of
+course, he read to her from his manuscript as the book grew under
+his hand.  Even Judy caught much of his story's meaning, and
+marvelled at herself because she, too, could understand.
+
+So the spring came, and the first writing of the book was nearly
+finished.
+
+And now the question arose:  What would they do about the final
+preparation of the manuscript for the printers?  Brian explained
+that he should have a typewritten copy of his script, which he
+would work over, correct, and revise, and from which perfected copy
+the final manuscript would be typewritten.  But neither Auntie Sue
+nor Brian would consider his finishing the book anywhere but in the
+little log house by the river; even if there had been no other
+reason why Brian should not go to the city, if it could be avoided.
+
+"There is only one thing to do,"--said Auntie Sue, at last, when
+the matter had been discussed several times,--"we must send for
+Betty Jo.  She has been studying stenography in a business college
+in Cincinnati, and, in her latest letter to me, she wrote that she
+would finish in April.  I'll just write her to come right here, and
+bring her typewriter along.  She will need a vacation, and she can
+have it and do your work at the same time.  Besides, I need to see
+Betty Jo.  She hasn't been to visit me since before Judy came."
+
+Brian thought that Auntie Sue seemed a little nervous and excited
+as she spoke, but he attributed it to her combined interest in the
+book and in the proposed typist.  The man could not know the real
+cause of his gentle old companion's agitation, nor with what
+anxiety she had considered the matter for many days before she
+announced her plan.  The fact was that Auntie Sue was taking a big
+chance, and she realized it fully.  But she could find no other way
+to secure the services of a competent stenographer for Brian, and,
+as Brian must have a competent stenographer in order to finish his
+book properly, she had decided to accept the risk.
+
+"That sounds all right, Auntie Sue," returned Brian.  "But who,
+pray tell, is Betty Jo?"
+
+"Betty Jo is,"--Auntie Sue paused and laughed with a suggestion of
+embarrassed confusion,--"Betty Jo is--just Betty Jo, Brian," she
+finished.
+
+Brian laughed now.  "Fine, Auntie Sue!  That describes her
+exactly,--tells me her life's history and gives me a detailed
+account of her family,--ancestors and all."
+
+"It describes her with more accuracy than you think," retorted
+Auntie Sue, smiling in return at his teasing manner.
+
+"I reckon as how she's got more of er name than that, ain't she?"
+said Judy, who was a silent, but intensely interested, listener.
+"I've allus took notice that folks with funny names'll stand a
+right smart of watchin'."
+
+Brian and Auntie Sue laughed together at this, but the old lady
+said, with a show of spirit:  "Judy!  You know nothing about it!
+You never even saw Betty Jo!  You shouldn't say such things,
+child."
+
+"Might as well say 'em as ter think 'em, I reckon," Judy returned,
+her beady-black eyes stealthily watching Brian.
+
+"What is your Betty Jo's real name, Auntie Sue?" asked Brian,
+curiously.
+
+Again Auntie Sue seemed to hesitate; then--"Her name is Miss Betty
+Jo Williams," and as she spoke the old teacher looked straight at
+Brian.
+
+"A perfectly good name," Brian returned; "but I never heard of her
+before."
+
+Judy's black eyes, with their stealthy, oblique look, were now
+watchfully fixed on Auntie Sue.
+
+"She is the orphan-niece of one of my old pupils," Auntie Sue
+continued.  "I have known her since she was a baby.  When she
+finished her education in the seminary, and had travelled abroad
+for a few months, she decided all at once that she wanted a course
+in a business college, which was just what any one knowing her
+would expect her to do."
+
+"Sounds steady and reliable," commented Brian.  "But will she
+come?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, she will, and be tickled to death over the job,"
+returned Auntie Sue.  "I'll write her at once."
+
+While Auntie Sue was preparing to write her letter, Judy muttered,
+in a tone which only Brian heard:  "Just the same, 'tain't no name
+for a common gal ter have; hit sure ain't.  There's somethin' dad
+burned queer 'bout hit somewhere."
+
+"Nonsense! Judy," said Brian in a low voice; "don't worry Auntie
+Sue."
+
+"I ain't aimin' ter worry her none," returned the mountain girl;
+"but I'll bet you-all a pretty that this here gal'll worry both of
+youuns 'fore you are through with her;--me, too, I reckon."
+
+For some reason, Auntie Sue's letter to Betty Jo seemed to be
+rather long.  In fact, she spent the entire evening at it; which
+led Judy to remark that "hit sure looked like Auntie Sue was aimin'
+ter write a book herself."
+
+A neighbor who went to Thompsonville the following day with a load
+of hogs for shipment, posted the letter.  And, in due time, another
+neighbor brought the answer.  Betty Jo would come.
+
+It was the day following the evening when Brian wrote the last page
+of his book that another letter came to Auntie Sue,--a letter
+which, for the second time, very nearly wrecked Brian Kent's world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+JUDY TO THE RESCUE.
+
+
+Brian was working in the garden.  It was early in the afternoon,
+and the man, as he worked in the freshly ploughed ground, was
+rejoicing at the completion of his book.
+
+Straightening up from his labor, he drew a deep breath of the
+fragrant air.  About him on every side, and far away into the blue
+distance, the world was dressed in the gala dress of the season.
+The river, which at the breaking of the winter had been a yellow
+flood that washed the top of the bank in front of the house and
+covered the bottom-lands on the opposite side, was again its normal
+self, and its voice to him, now, was a singing voice of triumphal
+gladness.
+
+For Brian, too, the world was new, and fresh, and beautiful.  The
+world of his winter was gone.  He had found himself in his work,
+and in the glorious consciousness of the fact he felt like shouting
+with sheer joy of living.
+
+"And Auntie Sue, dear Auntie Sue," he thought, looking with love in
+his eyes toward the house, how wonderful she had been in her
+helpful understanding and never-failing faith in him.  After all,
+it was Auntie Sue's triumph more than it was his.
+
+His happy musing was interrupted by a neighbor who, on his way home
+from Thompsonville, stopped at the garden fence with the letter for
+Auntie Sue.
+
+Brian took the letter with a jest which brought a roar of laughter
+from the mountaineer, and, when the latter had gone on his way up
+the hill, started toward the house to find Auntie Sue.
+
+Glancing at the envelope in his hand, Brian noticed the postmark
+"Buenos Aires."  He stopped suddenly, staring dumbly at the words
+in the circular mark and at the name written on the envelope.  Over
+and over, he read "Buenos Aires,--Miss Susan Wakefield; Buenos
+Aires,--Miss Susan Wakefield."  Something--  His brain seemed to be
+numb.  His hands trembled.  He looked about at the familiar
+surroundings, and everything seemed suddenly strange and unreal to
+him.  He looked again at the letter in his hand, turning it
+curiously.  A strange feeling of oppression and ominous foreboding
+possessed him as though the bright spring sky were all at once
+overcast with heavy and menacing storm-clouds.  What was it?
+"Buenos Aires,--Susan Wakefield?"  Where had he seen that
+combination before?  What was it that made the name of the Argentine
+city in connection with Auntie Sue's name seem so familiar?  Slowly,
+he went on to the house, and, finding Auntie Sue, gave her the
+letter.
+
+"Oh!" cried the old lady, as she saw the postmark on the envelope.
+"It must be from brother John.  It is not John's writing, though,"
+she added, as she opened the envelope.
+
+And at her words the feeling of impending disaster so oppressed
+Brian Kent that only by an effort could he control himself.  He was
+possessed of the strange sensation of having at some time in the
+past lived the identical experience through which he was at that
+moment passing.  "Susan Wakefield;--a brother John in Buenos Aires,
+Argentine;--the letter!"  It was all so familiar that the allusion
+was startling in its force.  But that ominous cloud,--that sense of
+some great trouble near that filled him with such unaccountable
+dread--what could it mean?
+
+An exclamation from Auntie Sue drew his attention.  She looked at
+him with tear-filled eyes, and her sweet voice broke as she said:
+"Brian!  Brian!  John is dead!  This--this letter is from the
+doctor who attended him."
+
+Tenderly, as he would have helped his own mother, Brian assisted
+Auntie Sue to her room.  For a little while he sat with her, trying
+to comfort her with such poor words as he could find.
+
+Briefly, she told him of the brother who had lived in Argentine for
+many years.  He had married a South-American woman whom Auntie Sue
+had never seen, and while not wealthy had been moderately
+prosperous.  But he had never forgotten his sister who was so alone
+in the world.  "Several times, when he could, he sent me money for
+my savings-bank account," she finished simply, her sweet old voice
+low and tender with the memories of the years that were gone. "John
+and I were always very fond of each other.  He was a good man,
+Brian."
+
+Brian Kent sat like a man stricken dumb.  Auntie Sue's words, "he
+sent me money for my savings-bank account," had made the connection
+between the names "Buenos Aires, Argentine; John Wakefield; Susan
+Wakefield," and the thing for which his mind had been groping with
+such a sense of impending disaster.
+
+In her grief over the death of her brother, and in her memories of
+their home years so long past, dear old Auntie Sue had forgotten
+the peculiar meaning her words might have for the former clerk of
+the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank who sat beside her, and to
+whom she turned in her sorrow as a mother to a dearly beloved son.
+
+"But it is all right, Brian, dear," she said with brave cheerfulness.
+"When one has watched the sunsets for seventy years, one ceases to
+fear the coming of the night, for always there is the morning.  Just
+let me rest here alone for a little while, and I will be myself
+again."
+
+She looked up at him with a smile, and Brian Kent, kneeling beside
+the bed, bowed his head and caught the dear old hands to his lips.
+Without trusting himself to speak again, the man left the room,--
+closing the door.
+
+He moved about the apartment as one in a dream.  With a vividness
+that was torture, he lived again that hour in the bank when,
+opening the afternoon mail, he had found the letter from Susan
+Wakefield with the Argentine notes, which her letter said she had
+received from her brother John in Buenos Aires, and which she was
+sending to the bank for deposit to her little account.  It had been
+a very unbusinesslike letter and a very unbusinesslike way to
+transmit money.  It was, indeed, this nature of the transaction
+that had tempted the hard-pressed clerk.
+
+Mechanically, Brian stopped at his writing-table to finger the
+manuscript which he had finished the evening before.  Was it only
+the evening before?  Taking up the volume of closely written sheets
+which were bound together by a shoestring that Auntie Sue had
+laughingly found for him, when he had so joyously announced the
+completion of the last page of his book, he turned the leaves
+idly,--reading here and there a sentence with curious interest.
+The terrific mental strain of his situation completely divorced
+him, as it were, from the life which he had lived during those
+happy months just past, and which was so fully represented by his
+work.
+
+Again the river, swinging around a sudden turn in its course, had
+come upon a passage where its peaceful flow was broken by the wild
+turmoil of the troubled waters.
+
+"And Auntie Sue,"--something within the man's self was saying,--
+"dear Auntie Sue, who had saved him, not only from death, but from
+the hell of the life that he had formerly lived, as well; and whose
+loving companionship and sympathetic understanding had so inspired
+and strengthened him in the work which had been the passionate
+desire of his heart;--the gentle old teacher whose life had been so
+completely given to others, and who, in the helplessness of her
+last years, was so alone,--Auntie Sue was depending upon that money
+which her brother had sent her as the only support of the closing
+days of her life.  Auntie Sue believed that her money was safe in
+the bank.  That belief was to her a daily comfort.  Auntie Sue did
+not know that she was almost penniless;--that the man whom she had
+saved with such a wondrous salvation had robbed her, and left her
+so shamefully without means for the necessities of life.  Auntie
+Sue did not know.  But she would know,"--that inner voice went on.
+"The time would come when she would learn the truth.  It was
+certain to come.  It might come any day.  Then--then--"
+
+As one moving without conscious purpose, Brian Kent went from the
+house,--the manuscript in his hand.
+
+Judy was sitting idly on the porch steps.  At sight of the mountain
+girl the man knew all at once that there was one thing he must do.
+He must make sure that there was no mistake.  He was already sure,
+of course; but still, as a condemned man at the scaffold hopes
+against hope for a stay of sentence, so he caught at the shadowy
+suggestion of a possibility.
+
+"Come with me, Judy," he said, forcing himself to speak coolly; "I
+want to talk with you."
+
+Judy arose, and, looking at him in her stealthy, oblique way, said,
+in her drawling monotone:  "What's happened ter Auntie Sue?  Was
+there somethin' in that there letter Bud Jackson give you-all for
+her what's upset her?"
+
+"Auntie Sue's brother is dead, Judy," Brian answered.  "She wishes
+to be alone, and we must not disturb her.  She will be all right in
+a little while.  Come, let us walk down toward the bluff."
+
+When they had reached a spot on the river-bank a short distance
+above the Elbow Rock cliff, Brian said to his companion:  "Judy, I
+want you to tell me something.  Did Auntie Sue ever send money in a
+letter to the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, in Chicago?"
+
+"The black, beady eyes shifted evasively, and the mountain girl
+turned her sallow, old-young face away from Brian's direct gaze.
+
+"Look at me, Judy."
+
+She sent a stealthy, oblique glance in his direction.
+
+"You must tell me."
+
+"I done started ter tell you-all onct,--that time pap ketched me,--
+an' you-all 'lowed as how I oughten ter tell nothin' 'bout Auntie
+Sue to nobody."
+
+"But it is different now, Judy," returned Brian.  "Something has
+happened that makes it necessary for me to know."
+
+"Meanin' that there letter 'bout her brother bein' dead?" asked
+Judy, shrewdly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What you-all got ter know for?"
+
+"Because--"  Brian could not finish.
+
+Judy's beady eyes were watching him intently, now.  "Hit looks like
+you-all ain't a-needin' me ter tell you-all anythin'," she observed
+dryly.
+
+"Then Auntie Sue did send money?"
+
+"She sure did.  I seed her fix hit in the letter, myself," came the
+answer.
+
+"What kind of money?"
+
+"I dunno,--some funny kind hit was,--what her brother done sent her
+from some funny place, I dunno just where."
+
+"When did she send it?"
+
+"'Bout a month 'fore you come."
+
+"And--and did any letter ever come from the bank to tell her that
+the money was received by them all right?"
+
+The mountain girl did not answer, but again turned her face away.
+
+"Tell me," Brian insisted.  "I--I--must know, Judy," and his voice
+was harsh and broken with emotion.
+
+The answer came reluctantly:  "I reckon you-all knows where that
+there money went ter."
+
+The girl's answer sent a new thought like a hot iron into Brian
+Kent's tortured brain.  He caught Judy's arm in quick and fearful
+excitement.  "Judy!" he gasped, imploringly, "Judy, do you--? does
+Auntie Sue know--? does she know that I--?"
+
+"How could she help knowin'?  She ain't no fool.  An' I done heard
+that there Sheriff an' the deteckertive man tellin' her 'bout you
+an' the bank.  An' the Sheriff, he done give her a paper what he
+said told all 'bout what you-all done, an' she must er burned the
+paper, or done somethin' with hit, 'cause I couldn't never find hit
+after that night.  An' what would she do that for?  And what for
+did she make me promise not ter ever say nothin' ter you-all 'bout
+that there money letter?  An' why ain't she said nothin' to you
+'bout the letter from the bank not comin', if she didn't know hit
+was you 'stead of them what done got the money?"
+
+The girl paused for a moment, and then went on in a tone of
+reverent wonder:  "An' to think that all the time she could a-
+turned you-all over to that there Sheriff an' got the money-reward
+to pay her back what you-all done tuck."
+
+Brian Kent was as one who had received a mortal hurt.  His features
+were distorted with suffering.  With eyes that could not see, he
+looked down at the manuscript to which he still unconsciously
+clung; and, again, he fingered the pages of his work as though some
+blind instinct were sending his tormented soul to seek relief in
+the message which, during the happy months just past, he had
+written for others.
+
+And the deformed mountain girl, who stood before him with twisted
+body and old-young face, grew fearful as she watched the suffering
+of this man whom she had come to look upon as a superior being from
+some world which she, in her ignorance, could never know.
+
+"Mr. Burns," she said at last, putting out her hand and plucking at
+his sleeve, "Mr. Burns, you-all ain't got no call ter be like this.
+You-all ain't plumb bad.  I knows you ain't, 'count of the way you-
+all have been ter me an' 'cause you kept pap from hurtin' me, an'
+'cause you are takin' care of Auntie Sue like you're doin'.  Hit
+ain't no matter 'bout the money, now, 'cause you-all kin take care
+of her allus."
+
+Brian looked up from the manuscript in his hand, and stared dumbly
+at the girl, as if he failed to hear her clearly.
+
+"An' just think 'bout your book," Judy continued pleadingly.
+"Think 'bout all them fine things you-all have done wrote down for
+everybody ter read,--'bout the river allus a-goin' on just the
+same, no matter what happens, an' 'bout Auntie Sue an'--"
+
+She stopped, and drew away from him, frightened at the look that
+came into the man's face.
+
+"Don't, Mr. Burns!  Don't!" she half-screamed.  "'Fore God, you-all
+oughten ter look like that!"
+
+The man threw up his head, and laughed,--laughed as the wild,
+reckless and lost Brian Kent had laughed that black night when, in
+the drifting boat, he had cursed the life he was leaving and had
+drunk his profane toast to the darkness into which he was being
+carried.
+
+Raising the manuscript, which represented all that the past months
+of his re-created life had meant to him, and grasping it in both
+hands, he shook it contemptuously, as he said, with indescribable
+bitterness and the reckless surrendering of every hope:  "'All them
+fine things that I have wrote down for everybody ter read.'"  He
+mimicked her voice with a sneer, and laughed again.  Then:  "It's
+all a lie, Judy, dear;--a damned lie.  Auntie Sue is a saint, and
+believes it.  She made me believe it for a little while,--her
+beautiful, impossible dream-philosophy of the river.  The river,--
+hell!--the river is as treacherous and cruel and false and tricky
+and crooked as life itself!  And I am as warped and twisted in mind
+and soul as you are in body, Judy, dear.  Neither of us can help
+it.  We were made that way by the river.  To hell with the whole
+impossible mess of things!"  With a gesture of violent rage, he
+turned toward the river, and, taking a step forward, lifted the
+manuscript high above his head.
+
+Judy screamed, "Mr. Burns, don't!"
+
+He paused an instant, and, turning his head, looked at her with
+another laugh.
+
+"'Fore God, you dassn't do that!" she implored.
+
+And then, as the man turned his face from her, and his arms went
+back above his head for the swing that would send the manuscript
+far out into the tumbling waters of the rapids, she leaped toward
+him, and, catching his arm, hampered his movement so that the book
+fell a few feet from the shore, where the water, checked a little
+in its onward rush to the cliff by the irregular bank, boiled and
+eddied among the rocky ledges and huge boulders that retarded its
+force.  Another leap carried the mountain girl to the edge of the
+bank, where she crouched like a runner ready for the report of the
+starter's pistol, her black, beady eyes searching the stream for
+the volume of manuscript, which had disappeared from sight, drawn
+down by the troubled swirling currents.
+
+The man, watching her, laughed in derision; but, while his mocking
+laughter was still on his lips, the boiling currents brought the
+book, again, to the surface, and Brian saw the girl leave the bank
+as if thrown by a powerful spring.  Straight and true she dived for
+the book, and even as she disappeared beneath the surface her hands
+clutched the manuscript.
+
+For a second, Brian Kent held his place as if paralyzed with
+horror.  Then, as Judy's head appeared farther down the stream, he
+ran with all his strength along the bank to gain a point a little
+ahead of the swimming girl before he should leap to her rescue.
+
+But Judy, trained from her birth on that mountain river, knew
+better than Brian what to do.  A short distance below the point
+where she had plunged into the stream, a huge boulder, some two or
+three feet from the shore, caused a split in the current, one fork
+of which set in toward the bank.  Swimming desperately, the girl
+gained the advantage of this current, and, just as Brian reached
+the spot, she was swept against the bank, where, with her free
+hand, she caught and held fast to a projecting root.  Had she been
+carried past that point, nothing could have saved her from being
+swept on into the wild turmoil of the waters at Elbow Rock.
+
+It was the work of a moment for Brian to throw himself flat on the
+ground at the edge of the bank and, reaching down, to grasp the
+girl's wrist.  Another moment, and she was safe beside him, his
+manuscript still tightly held under one arm.
+
+Not realizing, in his excitement, what he was doing, Brian shook
+the girl, saying angrily:  "What in the world do you mean, taking
+such a crazy-fool chance as that!"
+
+She broke away from him with:  "Well, what'd you-all go an' do such
+a dad burned fool thing for?  Hit's you-all what's crazy yourself--
+plumb crazy!"
+
+Brian held out his hand:  "Give me that manuscript!"
+
+Judy clutched the book tighter, and drew back defiantly.  "I won't.
+You-all done throwed hit away onct.  'Tain't your'n no more,
+nohow."
+
+"Well, what do you purpose to do with it?" said the puzzled man, in
+a gentler tone.
+
+"I aims ter give hit ter Auntie Sue," came the startling reply.  "I
+reckon she'll know what ter do.  Hit allus was more her'n than
+your'n, anyhow.  You done said so yourself.  I heard you only last
+night when you-all was so dad burned tickled at gittin' hit done.
+You-all ain't got no right ter sling hit inter the river, an',
+anyway, I ain't a-goin' ter let you."
+
+"Which sounds very sensible to me," came a clear voice from a few
+feet distant.
+
+Judy and Brian turned quickly, to face a young woman who stood
+regarding them thoughtfully, with a suggestion of a smile on her
+very attractive face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+BETTY JO CONSIDERS.
+
+
+The most careless eye would have seen instantly that the newcomer
+was not a native of that backwoods district.  She was not a large
+woman, but there was, nevertheless, a full, rounded strength, which
+saved her trim and rather slender body from appearing small.
+Neither would a discriminating observer describe her by that too-
+common term "pretty."  She was more than that.  In her large, gray
+eyes, there was a look of frank, straightforward interest that
+suggested an almost boyish good-fellowship, while at the same time
+there was about her a general air of good breeding; with a calm,
+self-possessed and businesslike alertness which, combined with a
+wholesome dignity, commanded a feeling of respect and confidence.
+Her voice was clear and musical, with an undertone of sympathetic
+humor.  One felt when she spoke that while she lacked nothing of
+intelligent understanding and sympathetic interest, she was quite
+ready to laugh at you just the same.
+
+When the two stood speechless, she said, looking straight at Brian:
+"It seems to me, sir, that the young lady has all the best of the
+argument.  But I really think she should have some dry clothes as
+well."
+
+She turned to the dripping and dishevelled Judy:  "You poor child.
+Aren't you cold!  It is rather early in the season for a dip in the
+river, I should think.  Let me take whatever you have there, and
+you make for the house as fast as you can go,--the run will warm
+you."
+
+As she spoke, she went to the mountain girl, holding out her hand
+to take the manuscript, and smiling encouragingly.
+
+But Judy backed away, her stealthy, oblique gaze fixed with
+watchful surprise on the fair stranger.
+
+"This here ain't none of your put-in," and her shrill drawling
+monotone contrasted strangely with the other's pleasing voice.
+"Where'd you-all happen from, anyhow?  How'd you-all git here?"
+
+"I came over the bluff by the path," answered the other.  "You see,
+I left the train from the south at White's Crossing because I knew
+I could drive up from there by the river road quicker than I could
+go by rail away around through the hills to Thompsonville, and then
+make the drive down the river from there.  When I reached Elbow
+Rock, I was in such a hurry, I took the short cut, while the man
+with my trunk and things went by the road over Schoolhouse Hill,
+you know.  I arrived here just as this gentleman was pulling you
+from the water."
+
+Before Brian could speak, Judy returned with excitement:  "I know
+who you-all be now.  I ought ter knowed the minute I set eyes on
+you.  You-all are the gal with that there no-'count name, an'
+you've come ter work for him, there,"--she pointed to Brian,--"a-
+helpin' him ter write his book, what ain't his'n no more, nohow,
+'cause he done throwed hit away,--plumb inter the river."
+
+"I am Miss Williams," returned the other.  "My 'no-'count name,' I
+suppose, is Betty Jo."  She laughed kindly.  "Perhaps it won't seem
+so 'no'count' when we are better acquainted, Judy.  Won't you run
+along to the house, and change to some dry clothes?  You will catch
+your death of cold if you stand here like this."
+
+"How'd you-all know I was Judy?"
+
+"Why, Auntie Sue wrote me about you, of course."
+
+"An' you knowed me 'cause I'm so all crooked an' ugly, I reckon,"
+came the uncompromising return.
+
+Betty Jo turned to Brian:  "You are Mr. Burns, are you not, for
+whom I am to work?"
+
+Brian made no reply,--he really could not speak.  "And this,"--
+Betty Jo included Judy, the manuscript, and the river in a graceful
+gesture,--"this, I suppose, is the result of what is called 'the
+artistic temperament'?"
+
+Still the man could find no words.  The young woman's presence and
+her reference to his work brought to him, with overwhelming
+vividness, the memory of all to which he had so short a time before
+looked forward, and which was now so hopelessly lost to him.  He
+felt, too, a sense of rebellion that she should have come at such a
+moment,--that she could stand there with such calm self-possession
+and with such an air of competency.  Her confidence and poise in
+such contrast to the chaotic turmoil of his own thoughts, and his
+utter helplessness in the situation which had so suddenly burst
+upon him, filled him with unreasoning resentment.
+
+Betty Jo must have read in Brian Kent's face something of the
+suffering that held him there dumb and motionless before her, and
+so sensed a deeper tragedy than appeared on the surface of the
+incident; and her own face and voice revealed her understanding as
+she said, with quiet, but decisive, force:  "Mr. Burns, Judy must
+go to the house.  Won't you persuade her?"
+
+Brian started as one aroused from deep abstraction, and went to
+Judy; while Betty Jo drew a little way apart, and stood looking out
+over the river.
+
+"Give me the manuscript, Judy," said Brian gently, "and go on to
+the house."
+
+"You-all ain't a-goin' ter sling hit inter the river again?"  The
+words were half-question and half-assertion.
+
+"No," said Brian.  "I promise not to throw it into the river
+again."
+
+As Judy gave him the manuscript, she turned her beady eyes in a
+stealthy, oblique look toward Betty Jo, and whispered:  "You-all
+best tell her 'bout hit.  I sure hate her poison-bad; but hit's
+easy ter see she'd sure know what ter do."
+
+"Be careful that Auntie Sue doesn't see you like this, Judy," was
+Brian's only answer; and Judy started off for her much-needed
+change to dry clothing.
+
+When the mountain girl was gone, Brian stood looking at the water-
+stained volume of manuscript in his hand.  He had no feeling, now,
+of more than a curious idle interest in this work to which, during
+the months just past, he had given so without reserve the best of
+himself.  It was, he thought, strange how he could regard with such
+indifference a thing for which a few hours before he would have
+given his life.  Dumbly, he was conscious of the truth of Judy's
+words,--that the book was no longer his.  Judy was right--this book
+which he had called his had always been, in reality, Auntie Sue's.
+So the matter of his work, at least so far as he had to do with it,
+was settled--definitely and finally settled.
+
+But what of himself?  What was to become of him?  Of one thing only
+he was certain about himself;--he never could face Auntie Sue
+again.  Knowing, now, what he had done, and knowing that she knew;--
+that all the time she was nursing him back to health, all the time
+she had been giving him the inspiration and strength and peace of
+her gentle, loving companionship, in the safe and quiet harbor of
+her little house by the river, she had known that it was he who
+had--
+
+A clear, matter-of-fact, but gentle, voice interrupted his bitter
+thoughts:  "Is it so very badly damaged, Mr. Burns?"
+
+He had forgotten Betty Jo, who now stood close beside him.
+
+"Let me see?"  She held out her hand as he turned slowly to face
+her.
+
+Without a word, he gave her the manuscript.
+
+Very businesslike and practical, but with an underlying feeling of
+tenderness that was her most compelling charm, Betty Jo examined
+the water-stained volume.
+
+"Why, no," she announced cheerfully; "it isn't really hurt much.
+You see, the sheets being tied together so tightly, the water
+didn't get all the way through.  The covers and the first and last
+pages are pretty wet, and the edges of the rest are rather damp.
+It'll be smudged somewhat, but I don't believe there is a single
+word that can't be made out.  It is lucky it didn't prolong its
+bath, though, isn't it?  All we need to do, now, is to put it in
+the sun to dry for a few minutes."
+
+Selecting a sunny spot near by, she arranged the volume against a
+stone and deftly separated the pages so that the air could
+circulate more freely between them; and one would have said, from
+her manner of ready assurance, that she had learned from long
+experience exactly how to dry a manuscript that had been thrown in
+the river and rescued just in the nick of time.  That was Betty
+Jo's way.  She always did everything without hesitation,--just as
+though she had spent the twenty-three years of her life doing
+exactly that particular thing.
+
+Kneeling over the manuscript, and gently moving the wet sheets, she
+said, without looking up:  "Do you always bath your manuscripts
+like this before you turn them over to your stenographer to type,
+Mr. Burns?"
+
+In spite of his troubled state of mind, Brian smiled.
+
+The clear, matter-of-fact voice went on, while the competent hands
+moved the drying pages.  "You see, I never worked for an author
+before.  I suspect I have a lot to learn."
+
+She looked up at him with a Betty Jo smile that went straight to
+his heart, as Betty Jo's smiles had a curious way of doing.
+
+"I hope you will be very patient with me, Mr. Burns.  You will,
+won't you?  There is no real danger of your throwing ME in the
+river when the 'artistic temperament' possesses you, is there?"
+
+It was no use.  When Betty Jo set out to make a man talk, that man
+talked.  Brian yielded not ungracefully:  "I owe you an apology,
+Miss Williams," he said.
+
+"Indeed, no," Betty Jo returned, giving her attention to the
+manuscript again.  "It is easy to see that you are terribly upset
+about something; and everybody is so accustomed to being upset in
+one way or another that apologies for upsetments are quite an
+unnecessary bother, aren't they?"
+
+That was another interestingly curious thing about Betty Jo,--the
+way she could finish off a characteristic, matter-of-fact statement
+with a question which had the effect of making one agree instantly
+whether one agreed or not.
+
+Brian felt himself quite unexpectedly feeling that "upsetments"
+were quite common, ordinary, and to be expected events in one's
+life.  "But I am really in very serious trouble, Miss Williams," he
+said in a way that sounded oddly to Brian himself, as though he
+were trying to convince himself that his trouble really was
+serious.
+
+Betty Jo rose to her feet, and looked straight at him, and there
+was no mistaking the genuineness of the interest expressed in those
+big gray eyes.
+
+"Oh, are you?  Is it really so serious?  I am so sorry.  But don't
+you think you better tell me about it, Mr. Burns?  If I am to work
+for you, I may just as well begin right here, don't you think?"
+
+There it was again,--that trick-question.  Brian felt himself
+agreeing in spite of himself, though how he was to explain his
+painful situation to this young woman whom, until a few minutes
+before, he had never even seen, he did not know.  He answered
+cautiously, speaking half to himself:  "That is what Judy said."
+
+Betty Jo did not understand, and made no pretense,--she never made
+a pretense of anything.  "What did Judy say?" she asked.
+
+"That I had better tell you about it," he answered.
+
+And the matter-of-fact Betty Jo returned:  "Judy seems to be a very
+particular and common-sensing sort of Judy, doesn't she?"
+
+And Brian realized all at once that Judy was exactly what Betty Jo
+said.
+
+"But,--I--I--don't see how I CAN tell you, Miss Williams."
+
+"Why?" laughed Betty Jo.  "It is perfectly simple, Mr. Burns.
+here, now, I'll show you:  You are to sit down there on that nice
+comfortable rock,--that is your big office-chair, you know,--and
+I'll sit right here on this rock,--which is my little stenography-
+chair,--and you will just explain the serious business proposition
+to me with careful attention to details.  I must tell you that
+'detailing' is one of my strong points, so don't spare me.  I
+really should have my notebook, shouldn't I?"
+
+Again, in spite of himself, Brian smiled; also, before he was
+aware, they were both seated as Betty Jo had directed.
+
+"But this is not a business matter, Miss Williams," he managed to
+protest half-heartedly.
+
+Betty Jo was looking at her watch in a most matter-of-fact manner,
+and she answered in a most matter-of-fact voice:  "Everything is
+more or less a business matter, isn't it, Mr. Burns?"
+
+And Brian, if he had answered, would have agreed.
+
+Betty Jo slipped her watch back into her pocket, and continued:
+"You will have plenty of time before that man with my trunk and
+things can get away 'round over Schoolhouse Hill and down again to
+Auntie Sue's.  He will be obliged to stop at neighbor Tom's, and
+tell them all about me, of course.  We mustn't let him beat us to
+the house, though; so, perhaps, you better begin, don't you think?"
+
+That "don't-you-think?" so characteristic of Betty Jo, did its
+work, as usual; and so, almost before Brian Kent realized what he
+was doing, it had been decided for him that to follow Judy's advice
+was the best possible thing he could do, and he was relating his
+whole wretched experience to this young woman, about whom he knew
+nothing except that she was a niece of an old pupil of Auntie
+Sue's, and that she had just finished a course in a business
+college in Cincinnati.
+
+At several points in his story Betty Jo asked straightforward
+questions, or made short, matter-of-fact comments; but, always with
+her businesslike air of competent interest.  Indeed, she managed to
+treat the situation as being wholly impersonal; while at the same
+time the man was never for a moment made to feel that she was
+lacking in sincere and genuine sympathy.  Only when he told her
+that his name was Brian Kent, and mentioned the Empire Consolidated
+Savings Bank, did she for the moment betray excited surprise.  When
+she saw that he had noticed, she said quickly:  "I read of the
+affair in the papers, of course."
+
+Auntie Sue had indeed taken a big chance when she decided for Betty
+Jo to come to help Brian with his book.  But Auntie Sue had taken
+no chance on Betty Jo herself.  Perhaps it was, in fact, the dear
+old teacher's certainty about Betty Jo herself that had led her to
+accept the risk of sending for the niece of her friend and pupil
+under such a peculiar combination of circumstances.
+
+When Brian had finished his story with the account of his discovery
+of the distressing fact that he had robbed Auntie Sue and that she
+knew he had robbed her, Betty Jo said:  "It is really a sad story,
+isn't it, Mr. Burns?  But, oh, isn't Auntie Sue wonderful!  Was
+there ever such another woman in the world!  Don't you love her?
+And couldn't you do anything--anything that would make her happy?
+After all, when you think of Auntie Sue, and how wonderful she has
+been, this whole thing isn't so bad, is it?"
+
+"Why, I--I--don't think I see what you mean," Brian replied,
+puzzled by the unexpected turn she had given to the situation, yet
+convinced by that little question with which she finished that she
+was somehow right.
+
+"Well, I mean wouldn't YOU love to do for some one what Auntie Sue
+has done for you?  I should if I were only big enough and good
+enough.  It seems to me it would make one the happiest and
+contentedest and peacefulest person in the world, wouldn't it?"
+
+Brian did not answer.  While he felt himself agreeing with Betty
+Jo's view, he was wondering at himself that he could discuss the
+matter so calmly.  It was not that he no longer felt deeply the
+shame of this terrible thing that he had done; it was not that he
+had ceased to suffer the torment that had caused his emotional
+madness, which had found expression in his attempt to destroy his
+manuscript; it was only that this young woman somehow made it
+possible for him to retain his self-control, and instead of venting
+his emotions in violent and wholly useless expressions of regret,
+and self-condemnation, and in irrational, temperamental action, to
+consider coolly and sanely what he must do.  He was strangely
+possessed, too, of an instinctive certainty that Betty Jo knew
+exactly how he felt and exactly what she was doing.
+
+While he was thinking these things, or, rather, feeling them, Betty
+Jo went to see how the manuscript was drying.  She returned to her
+seat on the rock presently, saying:  "It is doing very nicely,--
+almost dry.  I think it will be done pretty soon.  In the meantime,
+what are we going to do about everything?  You have thought of
+something for you to do, of course!"
+
+"I fear I have felt rather more than I have thought," returned
+Brian.
+
+She nodded.  "Yes, I know; but feeling alone never arrives
+anywhere.  An excess of thoughtless feeling is sheer emotional
+extravagance.  I sound like a book, don't I?" she laughed.  "It is
+so just the same, Mr. Burns.  And now that you have--ah--been
+properly--not to say gloriously--extravagant at poor Judy's
+expense, we had better do a little thinking, don't you think?"
+
+The man's cheeks reddened at her words; but the straightforward,
+downright sincerity of those gray eyes, that looked so frankly into
+his, held him steady; while the interrogation at the end of her
+remark carried its usual conviction.
+
+"There is only one possible thing left for me to do, Miss
+Williams," he said earnestly.
+
+"And what is that?"  A smile that sent a glow of courage to Brian
+Kent's troubled heart accompanied the flat question.
+
+"I can't face Auntie Sue again, knowing what I know now."  He spoke
+with passion.
+
+"Of course you would expect to feel that way, wouldn't you?" came
+the matter-of-fact answer.
+
+"The only thing I can do," he continued, "is to give myself up, and
+go to the penitentiary; arranging, somehow, to do it in such a way
+that the reward will go to Auntie Sue.  God knows she deserves it!
+Sheriff Knox would help me fix that part, I am sure."
+
+For a moment there was a suspicious moisture in Betty Jo's gray
+eyes.  Then she said, "And you would really go to prison for Auntie
+Sue?"
+
+"It is the least I can do for her now," he returned.
+
+And Betty Jo must have felt the sincerity of his purpose, for she
+said, softly:  "I am sure that it would make Auntie Sue very happy
+to know that you would do that; and"--she added--"I know that you
+could not possibly make her more unhappy and miserable than by
+doing it, could you?"
+
+Again she had given an unexpected turn to the subject with the
+usual convincing question-mark.
+
+"But what can I do?" he demanded, letting himself go a little.
+
+Betty Jo steadied him with:  "Well, suppose you listen while I
+consider?  Did I tell you that 'considering' was another of my
+strong points, Mr. Burns?  Well, it is.  You may consider me while
+I consider, if you please.
+
+"The first thing is, that you must make Auntie Sue happy,--as happy
+as you possibly can do at any cost.  The second thing is, that you
+must pay her back that money, every penny of it.  Now, it wouldn't
+make her happy for you to go to prison, and the reward wouldn't pay
+back all the money; and if you were in prison, you never could pay
+the rest; besides, if you were wasting your time in prison, she
+would just die of miserableness, and she wouldn't touch a penny of
+that reward-money--not if she was to die for want of it.  So that
+settles that, doesn't it?"
+
+And Brian was forced to admit that, as Betty Jo put it, it did.
+
+"Very well, let us consider some more:  Dear Auntie Sue has been
+wonderfully, gloriously happy in doing what she has for you this
+past winter,--meaning your book and all.  I can see that she must
+have been.  No one could help being happy doing such a thing as
+that.  So you just simply can't spoil it all, now, by letting her
+know that you know what you know."
+
+Brian started to speak, but she checked him with:  "Please, Mr.
+Burns, I must not be interrupted when I am considering.  Next to
+the prison,--which we have agreed won't do at all,--you could do
+nothing that would make Auntie Sue more unhappy than to spoil the
+happiness she has in your not knowing what you have done to her.
+That is very clear, isn't it?  And think of her miserableness if,
+after all these weeks of happy anticipation, your book should never
+be published.  No, no, no; you can't rob Auntie Sue of her
+happiness in you just because you stole her money, can you?"
+
+And Brian knew in his heart that she was right.
+
+"So, you see," Betty Jo continued, "the only possible way to do is
+to go right along just as if nothing had happened.  And there is
+this final consideration,--which must be a dark secret between you
+and me,--when the book is finished, you must see to it that every
+penny that comes from it goes to Auntie Sue until she is paid back
+all that she lost through you.  Now, isn't that pretty fine
+'considering,' Mr. Burns?"
+
+And Brian was convinced that it was.  "But," he suggested, "the
+book may not earn anything.  Nothing that I ever wrote before did."
+
+"You never wrote one before just like this, did you?" came the very
+matter-of-fact answer.  "And, besides, if your book never earns a
+cent, it will do Auntie Sue a world more good than your going to
+prison for her.  That would be rather silly, now that you think of
+it, wouldn't it?  And now that we have our conspiracy all nicely
+conspired, we must hurry to the house before that man arrives with
+my things."
+
+She went for the manuscript as she spoke.  "See," she cried, "it is
+quite dry, and not a bit the worse for its temperamental experience!"
+She laughed gleefully.
+
+"But, Miss Williams," exclaimed Brian, "I--I--can't understand you!
+You don't seem to mind.  What I have told you about myself doesn't
+seem to--to--make any difference to you--I mean in your attitude
+toward me."
+
+"Oh, yes, it does," she returned.  "It makes me very interested in
+you, Mr. Burns."
+
+"But, how can you have any confidence--  How can you help me with
+my book now that you know what I am?" he persisted, for he was
+sincerely puzzled by her apparent indifference to the revelation he
+had made of his character.
+
+"Auntie Sue,"--she answered,--"just Auntie Sue.  Come,--we must
+go."
+
+"How in the world can I ever face her!" groaned Brian.
+
+"You won't get the chance at her, for awhile, with me around;--she
+will be so busy with me that she won't notice anything wrong with
+you.  So you will get accustomed to the conspiracy feeling before
+you are even suspected of conspiring.  You know, when one has once
+arrived at the state of not feeling like a liar, one can lie with
+astonishing success.  Haven't you found it so?"
+
+They laughed together over this as they went toward the house.
+
+As they reached the porch, Betty Jo whispered a last word of
+instruction:  "You better find Judy, and fix her the first thing;--
+fix her good and hard.  Here is Auntie Sue now.  Don't worry about
+her noticing anything strange about you.  I'll attend to her."
+
+And the next minute, Betty Jo had the dear old lady in her arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A MATTER OF BUSINESS.
+
+
+The weeks that followed the coming of Betty Jo to the little log
+house by the river passed quickly for Brian Kent.  Perhaps it was
+the peculiar circumstances of their first meeting that made the man
+feel so strongly that he had known her for many years, instead of
+for only those few short weeks.  That could easily have been the
+reason, because the young woman had stepped so suddenly into his
+life at a very critical time;--when his mental faculties were so
+confused by the turmoil and suffering of his emotional self that
+the past was to him, at the moment, far more real than the present.
+
+And Betty Jo had not merely come into his life casually, as a
+disinterested spectator; but, by the peculiar appeal of herself,
+she had led Brian to take her so into his confidence that she had
+become immediately a very real part of the experience through which
+he was then passing, and thus was identified with his past
+experience out of which the crisis of the moment had come.
+
+Again Betty Jo, in the naturalness of her manner toward him, and by
+her matter-of-fact, impersonal consideration of his perplexing
+situation, had brought to his unsettled and chaotic mind a sense of
+stability and order; and by subtly insinuating her own practical
+decisions as to the course he should follow, had made herself a
+very literal part of his inner life.  In fact, Betty Jo knew Brian
+Kent more intimately at the close of their first meeting than she
+could have known him after years of acquaintanceship under the
+ordinary course of development.
+
+Brian's consciousness of this would naturally cause him to feel
+toward the young woman as though she had long been a part of his
+life.  Still other causes might have contributed to the intimate
+companionship that so quickly became to them both an established
+and taken-for-granted fact; but, the circumstances of their first
+meeting, given, of course, their peculiar individualities, were,
+really, quite enough.  The fact that it was springtime might also
+have had something to do with it.
+
+The morning after her arrival, Betty Jo set to work typing the
+manuscript.  Brian went to his work on the timbered hillside.  In
+the evenings, Brian worked over the typewitten pages,--revising,
+correcting, perfecting,--and then, as Betty Jo made the final copy
+for the printers, they went critically over the work together.
+
+So the hours flew past on busy wings, and the days of the
+springtime drew toward summer.  The tender green of the new-born
+leaves and grasses changed to a stronger, deeper tone.  The air,
+which had been so filled with the freshness and newness of bursting
+buds and rain-blessed soil, and all the quickening life of tree
+and bush and plant, now carried the perfume of strongly growing
+things,--the feel of maturing life.
+
+To Brian, the voices of the river brought a fuller, deeper message,
+with a subtle undertone of steady and enduring purpose.
+
+From the beginning, Betty Jo established for herself the habit of
+leaving her work at the typewriter in the afternoons, and going for
+a walk over the hills.  Quite incidentally, at first, her walks
+occasionally led her by way of the clearing where Brian was at work
+with his ax, and it followed, naturally, that as the end of the day
+drew near, the two would go together down the mountain-side to the
+evening meal.  But long before the book was finished, the little
+afternoon visit and the walk together at the day's close had become
+so established as a custom that they both accepted it as a part of
+their day's life; and to Brian, at least, it was an hour to which
+he looked forward as the most delightful hour of the twenty-four.
+As for Betty Jo,--well, it was really Betty Jo who established the
+custom and developed it to that point where it was of such
+importance.
+
+Auntie Sue was too experienced from her life-long study of boys and
+girls not to observe the deepening of the friendship between the
+man and the woman whom she had brought together.  But if the dear
+old lady felt any twinges of an apprehensive conscience, when she
+saw the pair day after day coming down the mountain-side through
+the long shadows of the late afternoon, she very promptly banished
+them, and, quite consistently, with what Brian called her "River
+philosophy," made no attempt to separate these two life currents,
+which, for the time at least, seemed to be merging into one.
+
+And often, as the three sat together on the porch after supper to
+watch the sunsets, or later in the evening as Auntie Sue sat with
+her sewing while they were busy with their work and unobserving,
+the dear old lady would look at them with a little smile of tender
+meaning, and into the gentle eyes would come that far-away look
+that was born of the memories that had so sweetened the long years
+of her life, and of the hope and dream of a joy unspeakable that
+awaited her beyond the sunset of her day.
+
+In her long letter to Betty Jo, asking the girl to come, Auntie Sue
+had told the young woman the main facts of Brian's history as she
+knew them, omitting only the man's true name and the name of the
+bank.  She had even mentioned her conviction that there had been a
+woman in his trouble.  But Auntie Sue had not mentioned in her
+letter the money she had lost; nor did she now know that Brian had
+himself told Betty Jo at the time of their first meeting.
+
+On the day that Betty Jo typed the last page, and the book was
+ready for the printers, the young woman went earlier than usual to
+the clearing where Brian was at work.  The sound of his ax reached
+her while she was yet some distance away, and guided her to the
+spot where he was chopping a big white oak.
+
+Brian, with his eyes fixed on the widening cut at the base of the
+tree, did not notice the girl, who stood watching him.  She was
+smiling to herself at his ignorance of her presence and in
+anticipation of the moment when he should discover her, and there
+was in her eyes a look of wholesome womanly admiration for the man
+who swung his ax with such easy strength.  In truth, Brian Kent at
+his woodman's labor made a picture not at all unattractive.
+
+Swiftly, the cut in the tree-trunk widened as the ax bit deeply at
+every skilful stroke, and the chips flew about the chopper's feet.
+The acrid odor of the freshly cut oak mingled with the woodland
+perfume.  The sun warmly flooded the clearing with its golden
+light, and, splashing through the openings in the forest foliage,
+formed pools of yellow beauty amid the dark, rich green of the
+shadowy undergrowth.  The air was filled with the sense of life,
+vital and real, and strong and beautiful.
+
+And the young woman, as she stood smiling there, was keenly
+conscious of it all.  Most of all, perhaps, Betty Jo was conscious
+of the man, who worked with such vigor at his manly task.
+
+Slowly, accurately, the bright ax sank deeper and deeper into the
+heart of the tree.  The chips increased in scattered profusion.
+And then, as Betty Jo watched, the swinging ax cut through the last
+fibre of the tree's strength, and the leafy top swayed gently
+toward its fall.  Almost imperceptibly, at first, it moved while
+Betty Jo watched breathlessly.  Brian swung his ax with increasing
+vigor, now, while the wood, still remaining, cracked and snapped as
+the weight of the tree completed the work of the chopper.  Faster
+and faster the towering mass of foliage swung in a wide graceful
+arc toward the ground.  The man with the ax stepped back, his eyes
+fixed on the falling tree as, with swiftly increasing momentum, its
+great weight swept swiftly downward to its crashing end.
+
+Betty Jo clapped her hands in triumph; and Brian, turning, saw
+her standing there.  His face was flushed and glistening with
+perspiration; his broad chest heaved with the deep breathing gained
+by his exertion, and his eyes shone with the gladness of her
+presence.
+
+"You are early, to-day!" he cried.  "Have you finished?  Is it
+actually completed?"
+
+"All finished," she returned; and, going to the fallen tree, she
+put her hands curiously on the trunk, which lay a little higher
+than her waist.  "Help me up," she commanded.
+
+Brian set his ax against the stump, and, laughingly, lifted her to
+the seat she desired.  Then he stood watching her face as she
+surveyed the tangled mass of branches.
+
+"It looks so strange from here, doesn't it?" she said.
+
+"Yes; and I confess I don't like to see it that way;" he returned.
+"I wish they didn't have to be cut.  I feel like a murderer,--every
+one I fall."
+
+She looked down into his eyes, as she returned:  "I know you must.
+YOU would, of course.  But, after all, it has to be, and I don't
+suppose the tree minds so much, do you?"
+
+"No; I don't suppose it feels it much."  He laughed, and, throwing
+aside his hat, he ran his fingers through his tumbled hair for all
+the world like a schoolboy confused by being caught in some
+sentimental situation which he finds not only embarrassing, but
+puzzling as well.
+
+"I like you for feeling that way about it, though," Betty Jo
+confessed with characteristic frankness.  "And I am sure it must be
+a very good thing for the world that every one is not so intensely
+practical that they can chop down trees without a pang.  And that
+reminds me:  Speaking of the practical, now that the book is
+finished, what are we going to do with it?"
+
+"Send it to some publisher, I suppose," answered Brian, soberly;
+"and then, when they have returned it, send it to some other
+publisher."
+
+"Have you any particular publisher to whom you will send it first?"
+she asked.
+
+"They are all alike, so far as my experience goes," he returned.
+
+"I suppose it would be best if you could take your book East, and
+interview the publishers personally, don't you think?"
+
+Brian shook his head:  "I am not sure that it would make any
+difference, and, in any case, I couldn't do it."
+
+"I know," said Betty Jo, "and that is what I wanted to get at.  Why
+don't you appoint me your agent, and let me take your book East,
+and make the publishing arrangements for you?"
+
+Brian looked at her with such delighted surprise that Betty Jo
+smiled back at him well pleased.
+
+"Would you really do it?" he demanded, as though he feared she was
+jesting.
+
+"You are sure that you don't mean 'COULD I do it'?"--she returned,--
+"sure you could trust me?"
+
+To which Brian answered enthusiastically:  "You could do anything!
+If you undertake the job of landing a publisher for my stuff, it is
+as good as done."
+
+"Thank you," she said, jumping down from the tree-trunk.  "Now that
+we have settled it, let us go to the house and tell Auntie Sue, and
+I will start in the morning."
+
+As they went down the hill, they discussed the matter further, and,
+later, at the house, Brian took a moment, when Auntie Sue was in
+her room, to hand an envelope to his assistant.  "Your salary," he
+said, hurriedly, "and expense money for the trip."
+
+"Oh!"  Betty Jo's exclamation was one of surprise.  Then she said,
+in her most matter-of-fact, businesslike tone:  "Thank you.  I will
+render a statement of my account, but--"  For once, Betty Jo seemed
+at a loss for words.  "You don't mind if I ask--is--is this money--?"
+
+Brian's face was a study.  "Yes," he said, "it is really Auntie
+Sue's money; but it is all I have, and I can't return it to her--
+without her knowing--so I--"
+
+Betty Jo interrupted:  "I understand.  It is all we can do,--
+forgive me?"
+
+Brian Kent did not know that Betty Jo, a few minutes later, buried
+the envelope he had given her deep in the bottom of her trunk
+without even opening it.
+
+The next day, Brian drove to Thompsonville with Betty Jo, who took
+the noon train for the East.
+
+The two were rather quiet as "Old Prince" jogged soberly along the
+beautiful river road.  Only now and then did they exchange a few
+words of the most commonplace observation.
+
+They were within sight of the little Ozark settlement when Brian
+said, earnestly:  "I wish I could tell you, Miss Williams, just
+what your coming to help me with this work has meant to me."
+
+"It has meant a great deal to me, too, Mr. Burns," she returned.
+Then she added quickly:  "I suppose the first real work one does
+after finishing school always means more than any position
+following could possibly mean, don't you think?  Just like your
+book.  No matter how many you may write in the future, this will
+always mean more to you than any one of them."
+
+"Yes," he said slowly.  "This book will always mean more to me than
+all the others I may write."
+
+For a moment their eyes met with unwavering frankness.  Then Betty
+Jo turned her face away, and Brian stiffened his shoulders, and sat
+a little straighter in the seat beside her.  That was all.
+
+Very brave they were at the depot purchasing Betty Jo's ticket and
+checking her trunk.  With brave commonplaces they said good-bye
+when the train pulled in.  Bravely she waved at him from the open
+window of the coach.  And bravely Brian stood there watching until
+the train rounded the curve and disappeared from sight between the
+hills.
+
+The world through which Brian Kent drove that afternoon on his way
+back to Auntie Sue and Judy in the little log house by the river
+was a very dull and uninteresting world indeed.  All its brightness
+and its beauty seemed suddenly to have vanished.  And as "Old
+Prince" jogged patiently on his way, sleepily content with thoughts
+of his evening meal of hay and grain, the man's mind was disturbed
+with thoughts which he dared not own even to his innermost self.
+
+"Circumstances to a man," Auntie Sue had said, "always meant a
+woman."  And Brian Kent, while he never under any pressure would
+have admitted it, knew within his deepest self that it was a woman
+who had set him adrift on the dark river that dreadful night when
+he had cursed the world which he thought he was leaving forever.
+
+"Circumstances" in the person of Auntie Sue had saved him from
+destruction, and, in the little log house by the river, had brought
+about his Re-Creation.
+
+And then, when that revelation of his crime toward Auntie Sue had
+come, and the labor of months, with all that it implied of the
+enduring salvation of himself and the happiness of Auntie Sue, hung
+wavering in the balance, it was the "Circumstances" of Betty Jo's
+coming that had set him in the right current of action again.
+
+What waited for him around the next bend in the river, Brian
+wondered,--calm and peaceful waters, with gently flowing currents,
+or the wild tumult of dangerous rapids wherein he would be forced
+to fight for his very existence?  Would Betty Jo succeed as his
+agent to the publishers?  If she did succeed in finding a publisher
+to accept his book, would the reading public receive his message?
+And if that followed, what then?  When Betty Jo's mission in the
+East was accomplished, she was to return to Auntie Sue for the
+summer.  Then--?
+
+"Old Prince," of his own accord, was turning in at the gate, and
+Brian awoke from his abstraction to see Auntie Sue and Judy waiting
+for him.
+
+All during the evening meal and while he sat with Auntie Sue on
+the porch overlooking the river, as their custom was, Brian was
+preoccupied and silent; while his companion, with the wisdom of her
+seventy years, did not force the conversation.
+
+It was the time of the full moon, and when Auntie Sue at last bade
+him good-night, Brian, saying that the evening was too lovely to
+waste in sleep, remained on the porch.  For an hour, perhaps, he
+sat there alone; but his thoughts were not on the beauties of the
+scene that lay before him in all its dreamy charm of shadowy hills
+and moonlit river.  He had no ear for the soft voices of the night.
+The gentle breeze carried to him the low, deep-toned roar of the
+crashing waters at Elbow Rock; but he did not hear.  Moved at last
+by a feeling of restless longing, and the certainty that only a
+sleepless bed awaited him in the house, he left the porch to stroll
+along the bank of the river.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE SECRET OF AUNTIE SUE'S LIFE.
+
+
+Brian Kent, strolling along the bank of the river in the moonlight,
+and preoccupied with thoughts that were, at the last, more dreams
+than thoughts, was not far from the house when a sound from behind
+some near-by bushes broke in upon his reveries.  A moment, he
+listened.  Then telling himself that it was some prowling animal,
+or perhaps, a bird that his presence had disturbed, he went on.
+But he had gone only a few feet farther when he was conscious of
+something stealthily following him.  Stepping behind the trunk of a
+tree, he waited, watching.  Then he saw a form moving toward him
+through the shadows of the bushes.  Another moment, and the form
+left the concealing shadow, and, in the bright moonlight, he
+recognized Judy.
+
+At first, the man's feeling was that of annoyance.  He did not wish
+to be disturbed at such a time by the presence of the mountain
+girl.  But his habitual gentleness toward poor Judy, together with
+a very natural curiosity as to why she was following him at that
+time of the night, when he had supposed her in bed and asleep, led
+him to greet her kindly as he came from behind the tree:  "Well,
+Judy, are you, too, out enjoying the moonlight?"
+
+The girl stopped suddenly and half-turned as if to run; but, at his
+words, stood still.
+
+"What is it, Judy?" he asked, going to her.  "What is the matter?"
+
+"There's a heap the matter!" she answered, regarding him with that
+sly oblique look; while Brian noticed a feeling of intense
+excitement in her voice.  "I don't know what you-all are a-goin'
+ter think of me, but I'm bound ter tell you just the same,--seems
+like I got ter,--even if you-all was ter lick me for hit like pap
+used ter."
+
+"Why, Judy, dear," the puzzled man returned, soothingly, "you know
+I would never strike you, no matter what you did.  Come, sit down
+here on this log, and tell me about whatever it is that troubles
+you; then you can go back to sleep again."
+
+"I ain't a-wantin' ter set down.  I ain't been asleep.  Hit seems
+like I can't never sleep no more."  She wrung her hands and turned
+her poor twisted body about nervously; then demanded with startling
+abruptness:  "When do you-all 'low she'll git back?"
+
+The wondering Brian did not at first catch her meaning, and she
+continued, with an impatient jerk of her head:  "Hit's that there
+gal with the no-'count name, Betty Jo, I'm a-talkin' 'bout."
+
+"Oh, you mean Miss Williams," Brian returned.  "Why, I suppose she
+will be back in two or three weeks, or a month, perhaps; I don't
+know exactly, Judy.  Why?"
+
+"'Cause I'm a-tellin' you-all not ter let her come back here ever,"
+came the startling answer, in a voice that was filled with menacing
+anger.  Then, before Brian could find a word to reply, the mountain
+girl continued, with increasing excitement:  "You-all dassn't let
+her come back here, nohow, 'cause, if you do, I'll hurt her, sure.
+You-all have been a-thinkin' as how I was plumb blind, I reckon;
+but I seen you,--every evenin', when she'd pretend ter just go for
+a walk an' then'd make straight for the clearin' where you was a-
+choppin', an' then you'd quit, an' set with her up there on the
+hill.  Youuns never knowed I was a-watchin' from the bresh all the
+time, did you?  Well, I was; an' when youuns'd walk down ter the
+house, so slow like an' close together, I'd sneak ahead, an' beat
+you home; but all the time I was a-seein' you, an' youuns never
+knowed, 'cause youuns just naturally couldn't see nor hear nothin'
+but each other.  Don't you-all 'low as how I'd know by the way you
+looked at her, while youuns was a-fixin' that there book, every
+night, what you-all was a-thinkin' 'bout her?  My God-A'mighty! hit
+was just as plain ter me as if you was a-sayin' hit right out loud
+all the time,--a heap plainer hit was than if you'd done writ' hit
+down in your book.  I can't make out ter read print much, nohow,
+like youuns kin; but I sure kin see what I see.  I--"
+
+"Judy!  Judy!"  Brian broke the stream of the excited girl's talk.
+"What in the world are you saying?  What do you mean, child?"
+
+"You-all knows dad burned well what I'm a-meanin'!" she retorted,
+with increasing anger.  "I'm a-meanin' that you-all are plumb
+lovin' that there Betty Jo gal,--that's what I'm a-meanin'!--an'
+you-all sure ain't got ary right for ter go an' do sich a thing,
+nohow!"
+
+Brian tried to check her, but she silenced him with:  "I won't
+neither hush!  I can't!  I tell you I'm a-goin' ter say my say if
+you-all kills me!  I've just naturally got ter!  Seems like I was
+all afire inside an' would burn plumb up if I didn't!  I've got
+rights, I reckon, if I be all crooked an' twisted out er shape, an'
+ugly-faced an' no learnin', ner nothin'."
+
+A dry sob choked the torrent of words for an instant; but, with a
+savage effort she went on:  "I know I ain't nothin' alongside of
+her, but you-all ain't a-goin' ter have her just the same,--not if
+I have ter kill her first!  You ain't got no right ter have her,
+nohow, 'cause hit's like's not you-all done got a woman already
+somewheres, wherever 'twas you-all come from; an' even if you ain't
+got no woman already, I sure ain't a-goin' ter let you have her!
+What'd she ever do for you?  Hit was me what dragged you-all from
+the river when you was mighty nigh dead from licker an' too plumb
+sick ter save yourself!  Hit's me that's kept from tellin' the
+Sheriff who you be an' a-takin' that there reward-money!  Hit was
+me what jumped inter the river above Elbow Rock just ter git your
+dad burned old book, when you'd done throwed hit plumb away!
+
+"I knowed first time I heard Auntie Sue name her what she'd do ter
+you!  Any fool would a-knowed what a woman with a half-gal, half-
+boy name like her'n would do, an' she's done hit,--she sure has!
+But she ain't a-goin' ter do no more!  You-all belongs ter me a
+heap more'n you do ter her,--if hit comes ter that,--though, I
+ain't a-foolin' myself none a-thinkin' that sich as you could ever
+take up with sich as me,--me bein' what I am.  No, sir; I ain't
+never fooled myself ary bit like that, Mr. Burns.  But hit ain't a-
+makin' no difference how ugly an' crooked an' no 'count I be
+outside; the inside of me is a-lovin' you like she never could, ner
+nobody else, I reckon.  An' I'll just go on a-lovin' you, no matter
+what happens; an' I ain't a-carin' whether you got a woman already
+er not, er whether you-all have robbed er killed, er what you done.
+An'--an'--so I'm a-tellin' you, you'd best not let her come back
+here no more, 'cause--'cause I just naturally can't stand hit ter
+see youuns tergether!  'Fore God, I'm a-tellin' you true,--I'll
+sure hurt her!"
+
+The girl's voice raised to a pitch of frenzied excitement, and,
+whirling, she pointed to the river, as she cried:  "Look out there!
+What do you-all reckon your fine Betty Jo lady would do if I was
+ter git her ketched in them there rapids?  What do you-all reckon
+the Elbow Rock water would do ter her?  I'll tell you what hit'd
+do:  Hit would smash an' grind an' tear an' hammer that there fine,
+straight body of hers 'til hit was all broken an' twisted an'
+crooked a heap worse'n what I be,--that's what hit would do; an'
+hit would scratch an' cut an' beat up that pretty face an' mess up
+her pretty hair an' choke her an' smother her 'til she was all
+blue-black an' muddy, an' her eyes was red an' starin', an' she was
+nothin' but just an ugly lump of dirt; an' hit wouldn't even leave
+her her fine clothes neither,--the Elbow Rock water wouldn't,--
+hit'd just naturally tear 'em off her, an' leave her 'thout ary
+thing what's makin' you love her like you're a-doin'!  An' where
+would all her fine schoolin' an' smart talk an' pretty ways be
+then?  Eh?  She wouldn't be no better, nor half as good as me, I'm
+a-tellin' you, onct Elbow Rock got done with her!"
+
+The poor creature finished in wild triumph; then suddenly, as
+though spent with the very fury of her passion, she turned from the
+river, and said dully:  "You'd sure best not let her come back,
+sir!  'Fore God, I ain't a-wantin' ter do hit, but hit seems like I
+can't help myself; I can't sleep for wantin' ter fix hit so,--so's
+you just couldn't want ter have her no more'n you're a-wantin' me.
+I--I--sure ain't a-foolin' myself none, not ary bit, a-thinkin'
+you-all could ever git ter likin' sich as me; but, I can't help
+sort of dreamin' 'bout hit an' a-pretendin', an'--an' all the while
+I'm a-knowin', inside er me like, that there ain't nobody,--not
+Auntie Sue, nor this here Betty Jo, nor that there other woman, nor
+anybody,--what kin care for you like I'm a-carin',--they just
+naturally couldn't care like me; 'cause--'cause, you see, sir, I
+ain't got nobody else,--ain't no man but you ever even been decent
+ter me.  I sure ain't got nobody else--"
+
+The distraught creature's sobs prevented further speech, and she
+dropped down on the ground, weak and exhausted; her poor twisted
+body shaking and writhing with the emotion she could not voice.
+
+For a little while, Brian Kent himself was as helpless as Judy.  He
+could only stand dumbly, staring at her as she crouched at his
+feet.  Then, very gently, he lifted her from the ground, and tried
+as best he could to comfort her.  But he felt his words to be very
+shallow and inadequate, even though his own voice was trembling
+with emotion.
+
+"Come, Judy, dear," he said, at last, when she seemed to have in a
+measure regained her self-control.  "Come.  You must go back to the
+house, child."
+
+Drawing away from his supporting arm, she answered, quietly:  "I
+ain't no child, no more, Mr. Burns: I'm sure a woman, now.  I'm
+just as much a woman as--as--she is, if I be like what I am.  I'm
+plumb sorry I had ter do this; but I just naturally couldn't help
+hit.  You ain't got no call ter be scared I'll do hit again."
+
+When they were nearing the house, Judy stopped again, and, for a
+long minute, looked silently out over the moonlit river, while
+Brian stood watching her.
+
+"Hit is pretty, ain't hit, Mr. Burns?" she said at last.  "With the
+hills all so soft an'--an' dreamy-like, an' them clouds a-floatin'
+'way up there over the top of Table Mountain; with the moon makin'
+'em all silvery an' shiny 'round the edges, an' them trees on yon
+side the river lookin' like they was made er smoke er fog er
+somethin' like that; an' the old river hitself a-layin' there in
+The Bend like--like a long strip of shinin' gold,--hit sure is
+pretty!  Funny, I couldn't never see hit that a-way before,--ain't
+hit?"
+
+"Yes, Judy; it is beautiful to-night," he said.
+
+But Judy, apparently without hearing him, continued:  "'Seems like
+I can sense a little ter-night what Auntie Sue an' youuns are allus
+a-talkin' 'bout the river,--'bout hit's bein' like life an' sich as
+that.  An' hit 'pears like I kin kind of git a little er what you
+done wrote 'bout hit in your book,--'bout the currents an' the
+still places an' the rough water an' all.  I reckon as how I'm a
+part of your river, too, ain't I, Mr. Burns?"
+
+"Yes, Judy," he answered, wonderingly; "we are all parts of the
+river."
+
+"I reckon you're right," she continued.  "Hit sure 'pears ter be
+that a-way.  But I kin tell you-all somethin' else 'bout the river
+what you didn't put down in your book, Mr. Burns:  There's heaps
+an' heaps er snags an' quicksands an' sunk rocks an' shaller places
+where hit looks deep an' deep holes where hit looks shaller, an'
+currents what's hid 'way down under that'll ketch an' drag you in
+when you ain't a-thinkin', an' drown you sure.  'Tain't all of the
+river what Auntie Sue an' youuns kin see from the porch.  You see,
+I knows 'bout hit,--'bout them other things I mean,--'cause I was
+borned and growed up a-knowin' 'bout 'em; an'--an'--the next time
+you-all writes er book, Mr. Burns, I 'low you-all ought ter put in
+'bout them there snags an' things, 'cause folks sure got ter know
+'bout 'em, if they ain't a-wantin' ter git drowned."
+
+When Judy had gone into the house, Brian again sat alone on the
+porch.
+
+An hour, perhaps, had passed when a voice behind him said:  "Why,
+Brian, are you still up?  I supposed you were in bed long ago."
+
+He turned to see Auntie Sue, standing in the doorway.
+
+"And what in the world are you prowling about for, this time of the
+night?" Brian retorted, bringing a chair for her.
+
+"I am prowling because I couldn't sleep,--thinking about you,
+Brian," she answered.
+
+"I fear that is the thing that is keeping me up, too," he returned
+grimly.
+
+"I know," she said gently.  "Sometimes, one's self does keep one
+awake.  Is it--is it anything you care to tell me?  Would it help
+for me to know?"
+
+For some time, he did not answer; while the old teacher waited
+silently.  At last, he spoke, slowly:  "Auntie Sue, what is the
+greatest wrong that a woman can do?"
+
+"The greatest wrong a woman can do, Brian, is the greatest wrong
+that a man can do."
+
+"But, what is it, Auntie Sue?" he persisted.
+
+"I think," she answered,--"indeed I am quite sure,--that the
+greatest wrong is for a woman to kill a man's faith in woman; and
+for a man to kill a woman's faith in man."
+
+Brian Kent buried his face in his hands.
+
+"Am I right, dear?" asked the old gentlewoman, after a little.
+
+And Brian Kent answered:  "Yes, Auntie Sue, you are right--that is
+the greatest wrong."
+
+Again they were silent.  It was as though few words were needed
+between the woman of seventy years and this man who, out of some
+great trouble, had been so strangely brought to her by the river.
+
+Then the silvery-haired old teacher spoke again:  "Brian, have you
+ever wondered that I am so alone in the world?  Have you ever asked
+yourself why I never married?"
+
+"Yes, Auntie Sue," he answered.  "I have wondered."
+
+"Many people have," she said, with simple frankness.  Then--"I am
+going to tell you something, dear boy, that only two people in the
+world beside myself ever knew, and they are both dead, many years
+now.  I am going to tell you, because I feel--because I think--
+that, perhaps, it may help you a little.  I, too, Brian, had my
+dreams when I was a girl,--my dreams of happiness,--such as every
+true woman hopes for;--of a home with all that home means;--of a
+lover-husband;--of little ones who would call me 'mother';--and my
+dreams ended, Brian, on a battlefield of the Civil War.  He went
+from me the very day we were promised.  He never returned.  I have
+always felt that we were as truly one as though the church had
+solemnized and the law had legalized our union.  I promised that I
+would wait for him."
+
+"And you--you have kept that promise?  You have been true to that
+memory?" Brian Kent asked, wonderingly.
+
+"I have been true to him, Brian;--all the years of my life I have
+been true to him."
+
+Brian Kent bowed his head, reverently.
+
+Rising, the old gentlewoman went close to him, and put her hands on
+his shoulders.  "Brian, dear, I have told you my secret because I
+thought it might help you to know.  Oh, my boy--my boy,--don't--
+don't let anything--don't let anyone--kill your faith in womanhood!
+No matter how bitter your experience, you can believe, now, that
+there are women who can be faithful and true.  Surely, you can
+believe it now, Brian,--you must!"
+
+And as he caught her hands in his, and raised his face to whisper,
+"I do believe, Auntie Sue," she stooped and kissed him.
+
+Then, again, Brian Kent was alone in the night with his thoughts.
+
+And the river swept steadily on its shining way through the moonlit
+world to the distant sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+AN AWKWARD SITUATION.
+
+
+Frequent letters from Betty Jo informed Brian and Auntie Sue of
+that practical and businesslike young woman's negotiations with
+various Eastern publishers, until, at last, the matter was finally
+settled to Betty Jo's satisfaction.
+
+She had contracted with a well-known firm for the publication of
+the book.  The details were all arranged.  The work was to begin
+immediately.  Betty Jo was returning to the little log house by the
+river.
+
+Brian drove to Thompsonville the morning she was to arrive, and it
+seemed to him that "Old Prince" had never jogged so leisurely along
+the winding river road, yet he was at the little mountain station
+nearly an hour before the train was due.
+
+Those weeks had been very anxious weeks to Brian, in spite of
+Auntie Sue's oft-repeated assurances that no publisher could fail
+to recognize the value of his work.  And, to be entirely truthful,
+Brian himself, deep down in his heart, felt a certainty that his
+work would receive recognition.  But, still, he would argue with
+himself, his feeling of confidence might very well be due to the
+dear old gentlewoman's enthusiastic faith in him rather than in any
+merit in the book itself; and it was a well-established fact--to
+all unpublished writers at least--that publishers are a heartless
+folk, and exceedingly loth to extend a helpful hand to unrecognized
+genius, however great the worth of its offering.  He could scarcely
+believe the letters which announced the good news.  It did not seem
+possible that this all-important first step toward the success
+which Auntie Sue so confidently predicted for his book was now an
+accomplished fact.
+
+And now that Betty Jo's mission was completed, it seemed months ago
+that he had said good-bye to her and had watched the train
+disappear between the hills.  But when at last the long whistle
+echoing and reechoing from the timbered mountain-sides announced
+the coming of the train that was bringing her back, and the train
+itself a moment later burst into view and, with a rushing roar of
+steam and wheels and brakes, came to a stop at the depot platform,
+and there was Betty Jo herself, it seemed that it was only
+yesterday that she had gone away.
+
+Very calm and self-possessed and well poised was Betty Jo when she
+stepped from the train to meet him.  She was very capable and
+businesslike as she claimed her baggage and saw it safely in the
+spring wagon.  But still there was a something in her manner--a
+light in the gray eyes, perhaps, or a quality in the clear voice--
+that meant worlds more to the man than her simple statement, that
+she was glad to see him again.  Laughingly, she refused to tell him
+about her trip as they rode home, saying that Auntie Sue must hear
+it all with him.  And so conscious was the man of her presence
+there beside him that, somehow, the prospective success or failure
+of his book did not so much matter, after all.
+
+In the excitement of the joyous meeting between Auntie Sue and
+Betty Jo, Judy's stoical self-repression was unnoticed.  The
+mountain girl went about her part of the household work silently
+with apparent indifference to the young woman's presence.  But
+when, after the late dinner was over, Auntie Sue and Brian listened
+to Betty Jo's story, Judy, unobserved, was nearby, so that no word
+of the conversation escaped her.
+
+Three times that night, when all was still in the little log house
+by the river, the door of Judy's room opened cautiously, and the
+twisted form of the mountain girl appeared.  Each time, for a few
+minutes, she stood there in the moonlight that shone through the
+open window into the quiet room, listening, listening; then went
+stealthily to the door of the room where Betty Jo was sleeping, and
+each time she paused before that closed door to look fearfully
+about the dimly lighted living room.  Once she crept to Brian's
+door, and then to Auntie Sue's, and once she silently put her hand
+on the latch of that door between her and Betty Jo; but, each time,
+she went stealthily back to her own room.
+
+Betty Jo awoke early that morning.  Outside her open window the
+birds were singing, and the sun, which was just above the higher
+mountain-tops, was flooding the world with its wealth of morning
+beauty.  The music of the feathery chorus and the golden beauty of
+the light that streamed through the window into her room, with the
+fresh enticing perfume of the balmy air, were very alluring to the
+young woman just returned from the cities' stale and dingy
+atmosphere.
+
+Betty Jo decided instantly that she must go for a before-breakfast
+walk.  From the window, as she dressed, she saw Brian going to the
+barn with the milk-pail, and heard him greet the waiting "Bess" and
+exchange a cheery good-morning with "Old Prince," who hailed his
+coming with a low whinny.
+
+Quietly, so as not to disturb Auntie Sue, Betty Jo slipped from the
+house and went down the gentle slope to the river-bank, and
+strolled along the margin of the stream toward Elbow Rock,--pausing
+sometimes to look out over the water as her attention was drawn to
+some movement of the river life, or turning aside to pluck a wild
+flower that caught her eye.  She had made her way thus leisurely
+two-thirds of the distance perhaps from the house to Elbow Rock
+bluff when Judy suddenly confronted her.  The mountain girl came so
+unexpectedly from among the bushes that Betty Jo, who was stooping
+over a flower, was startled.
+
+"Judy!" she exclaimed.  "Goodness! child, how you frightened me!"
+she finished with a good-natured laugh.  But as she noticed the
+mountain girl's appearance, the laugh died on her lips, and her
+face was grave with puzzled concern.
+
+Poor Judy's black hair was uncombed and dishevelled.  The sallow,
+old-young face was distorted with passion, and the beady eyes
+glittered with the light of an insane purpose.
+
+"What is it, Judy?" asked Betty Jo.  "What in the world is the
+matter?"
+
+"What'd you-all come back for?" demanded Judy with sullen menace in
+every word.  "I done told him not ter let you.  Hit 'pears ter me
+youuns ought ter have more sense."
+
+Alarmed at the girl's manner, Betty Jo thought to calm her by
+saying, gently:  "Why, Judy, dear, you are all excited and not a
+bit like yourself.  Tell me what troubles you.  I came back because
+I love to be here with Auntie Sue, of course.  Why shouldn't I some
+if Auntie Sue likes to have me?"
+
+"You-all are a-lyin'," returned Judy viciously.  "But you-all sure
+can't fool me.  You-all come back 'cause he's here."
+
+A warm blush colored Betty Jo's face.
+
+Judy's voice raised shrilly as she saw the effect of her words.
+
+"You-all knows dad burned well that's what you come back for.  But
+hit ain't a-goin' ter do you no good; hit sure ain't.  I done told
+him.  I sure warned him what'd happen if he let you come back.  I
+heard you-all a-talkin' yesterday evenin' all 'bout his book an'
+what a great man that there publisher-feller back East 'lows he's
+goin' ter be.  An' I kin see, now, that you-all has knowed hit from
+the start, an' that's why you-all been a-fixin' ter git him away
+from me.  I done studied hit all out last night; but I sure ain't
+a-goin' ter let you do hit."
+
+As she finished, the mountain girl, who had worked herself into a
+frenzy of rage, moved stealthily toward Betty Jo, and her face,
+with those blazing black eyes, and its frame of black unkempt hair,
+and its expression of insane fury, was the face of a fiend.
+
+Betty Jo drew back, frightened at the poor creature's wild and
+threatening appearance.
+
+"Judy!" she said sharply.  "Judy!  What do you mean!"
+
+With a snarling grin of malicious triumph, Judy cried:  "Scared,
+ain't you!  You sure got reason ter be, 'cause there ain't nothin'
+kin stop me now.  Know what I'm a-goin' ter do?  I'm a-goin' ter
+put you-all in the river, just like I told him, an' old Elbow Rock
+is a-goin' ter make you-all broken an' twisted an' ugly like what
+my pap made me.  Oh, hit'll sure fix that there fine slim body of
+your'n, an' that there pretty face what he likes ter look at so,
+an' them fine clothes'll be all wet an' mussed an' torn off you.
+You-all sure will be a-lookin' worse'n what I ever looked the next
+time he sees you,--you with your no-'count, half-gal and half-boy
+name!"
+
+As the mountain girl, with the quickness of a wild thing, leaped
+upon her, Betty Jo screamed--one piercing cry, that ended in a
+choking gasp as Judy's hands found her throat.
+
+Brian, who was still at the barn, busy with the morning chores,
+heard.  With all his might, he ran toward the spot from which the
+call came.
+
+Betty Jo fought desperately; but, strong as she was, she could
+never have endured against the vicious strength of the frenzied
+mountain-bred Judy, who was slowly and surely forcing her toward
+the brink of the river-bank, against which the swift waters of the
+rapids swept with terrific force.
+
+A moment more and Brian would have been too late.  Throwing Judy
+aside, he caught the exhausted Betty Jo in his arms, and, carrying
+her a little back from the edge of the stream, placed her gently on
+the ground.
+
+Betty Jo did not faint; but she was too spent with her exertions to
+speak, though she managed to smile at him reassuringly, and shook
+her head when he asked if she was hurt.
+
+When Brian was assured that the girl was really unharmed, he turned
+angrily to face Judy.  But Judy had disappeared in the brush.
+
+Presently, as Betty Jo's breathing became normal, she arranged her
+disordered hair and dress, and told Brian what the mountain girl
+had said; and this, of course, forced the man to relate his
+experience with Judy that night when she had told him that Betty Jo
+must not come back.
+
+"I suppose I should have warned you, Miss Williams," he finished;
+"but the whole thing seemed to me so impossible, I could not
+believe there was any danger of the crazy creature actually
+attempting to carry out her wild threat; and, besides,--well, you
+can see that it was rather difficult for me to speak of it to you.
+I am sorry," he ended, with embarrassment.
+
+For a long moment, the two looked at each other silently; then
+Betty Jo's practical common sense came to the rescue:  "It would
+have been awkward for you to try to tell me, wouldn't it, Mr.
+Burns?  And now that it is all over, and no harm done, we must just
+forget it as quickly as we can.  We won't ever mention it again,
+will we?"
+
+"Certainly not," he agreed heartily.  "But I shall keep an eye on
+Miss Judy, in the future, I can promise you."
+
+"I doubt if we ever see her again," returned Betty Jo, thoughtfully.
+"I don't see how she would dare go back to the house after this.
+I expect she will return to her father.  Poor thing!  But we must be
+careful not to let Auntie Sue know."  Then smiling up at him, she
+added:  "It seems like Auntie Sue is getting us into all sorts of
+conspiracies, doesn't it?  What DO you suppose we will be called
+upon to hide from her next?"
+
+At Brian's suggestion, they went first to the barn, where he
+quickly finished his work.  Then, carrying the full milk-pail
+between them, they proceeded, laughing and chatting, to the house,
+where Auntie Sue stood in the doorway.
+
+The dear old lady smiled when she saw them coming so, and,
+returning their cheery greeting happily, added:  "Have you children
+seen Judy anywhere?  The child is not in her room, and the fire is
+not even made in the kitchen-stove yet."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+BETTY JO FACES HERSELF.
+
+
+All that day Auntie Sue wondered about Judy, while Brian and Betty
+Jo exhausted their inventive faculties in efforts to satisfy the
+dear old lady with plausible reasons for the mountain girl's
+disappearance.
+
+During the forenoon, Brian canvassed the immediate neighborhood,
+and returned with the true information that Judy had stopped at the
+first house below Elbow Rock for breakfast, where she had told the
+people that she was going back to her father, because she was
+"doggone tired of working for them there city folks what was a-
+livin' at Auntie Sue's."
+
+This was, in a way, satisfactory to Auntie Sue, because it assured
+her that the girl had met with no serious accident and because she
+knew very well the mountain-bred girl's ability to take care of
+herself in the hills.  But, still, the gentle mistress of the log
+house by the river was troubled to think that Judy would leave her
+so without a word.
+
+Betty Jo was so occupied during the day by her efforts to relieve
+Auntie Sue that she had but little time left for thought of herself
+or for reflecting on the situation revealed in her encounter with
+Judy.  But many times during the day the mountain girl's passionate
+accusation came back to her, "You-all are a-lyin'!  You-all come
+back 'cause HE is here."  Nor could she banish from her memory the
+look that was on Brian Kent's face that morning when he was
+carrying her in his arms back from the brink of the river-bank,
+over which the frenzied Judy had so nearly sent her to her death.
+And so, when the day at last was over, and she was alone in her
+room, it was not strange that Betty Jo should face herself squarely
+with several definite and pointed and exceedingly personal
+questions.
+
+It was like Betty Jo to be honest with herself and to demand of
+herself that her problems be met squarely.
+
+"First of all, Betty Jo," she demanded, in her downright,
+straightforward way of going most directly to the heart of a
+matter, "are you in love with Brian Kent?"
+
+Without hesitation, the answer came, "I have not permitted myself
+to love him."
+
+"You have not permitted yourself to love him?  That means that you
+would be in love with him if you dared, doesn't it?"
+
+And Betty Jo, in the safe seclusion of her room, felt her cheeks
+burn as she acknowledged the truth of the deduction.
+
+The next question was inevitable:  "Is Brian Kent in love with you,
+Betty Jo?"
+
+And Betty Jo, recalling many, many things, was compelled to answer,
+from the triumphant gladness of her heart:  "He is trying not to be,
+but he can't help himself.  And"--the downright and straightforward
+young woman continued--"because I know that Brian Kent is trying so
+hard not to love me is the real reason why I have not permitted
+myself to love him."
+
+But the clear-thinking, practical Betty Jo protested quickly:  "You
+must remember that you are wholly ignorant of Brian Kent's history,
+except for the things he has chosen to tell you.  And those things
+in his life which he has confessed to you are certainly not the
+things that could win the love of a girl like you, even though they
+might arouse your interest in the man.  Interest is not love, Betty
+Jo.  Are you quite sure that you are not making the mistake that is
+most commonly made by young women?"
+
+Betty Jo was compelled to answer that she was not mistaking interest
+for love, because had such been the case, she would not be able to
+so analyze the situation.  Betty Jo's quite womanly prejudice is
+admitted, because the prejudice was so womanly, and because Betty Jo
+herself was so womanly.
+
+"Very well, Miss Betty Jo," the young woman continued inexorably,
+"you are not permitting yourself to love Brian Kent because Brian
+Kent is trying not to love you.  But, why is the man trying so hard
+not to love you?"
+
+Betty Jo thought very hard over this question, and felt her way
+carefully to the answer.  "It might be, of course, that it is
+because he is a fugitive from the law.  A man under such
+circumstances could easily convince himself that no good woman
+would permit herself to love him, and he would therefore, in
+reasonable self-defense, prevent himself from loving her if he
+could."
+
+But surely Brian Kent had every reason to know that Betty Jo did
+not at all regard him as a criminal.  Betty Jo, as Auntie Sue,
+recognized only the re-created Brian Kent.  If that were all, they
+need only wait for the restitution which was so sure to come
+through his book.  And Brian Kent himself, through Auntie Sue's
+teaching and through his work, had come to recognize only his real
+self, and not the creature of circumstances which the river had
+brought to the little log house.  Betty Jo felt sure that there was
+more than this that was forcing the man to defend himself against
+his love for her.  Thus she was driven to the conclusion that there
+was something in Brian Kent's history that he had not made known to
+her,--a something that denied him the right to love her, and that,--
+reasoned poor Betty Jo in the darkness of her room,--could only be
+a woman,--a woman to whom he was bound, not by love indeed,--Betty
+Jo could not believe that,--but by ties of honor and of the law.
+
+And very clearly Betty Jo reasoned, too, that Brian's attitude
+toward her evidenced unmistakably his high sense of honor.  The
+very fact that he had so persistently--in all their companionship,
+in their most intimate moments together even--held this invisible
+and, to her, unknown barrier between them, convinced her beyond a
+doubt of the essential integrity of his character, and compelled
+her admiration and confidence.
+
+"That is exactly it, Betty Jo," she told herself sadly; "you love
+him because he tries so hard to keep himself from loving you."
+
+And thus Betty Jo proved the correctness of Auntie Sue's loving
+estimate of her character and justified the dear old teacher's
+faith in the sterling quality of her womanhood.
+
+Face to face with herself, fairly and squarely, the girl accepted
+the truth of the situation for Brian and for herself, and
+determined her course.  She must go away,--she must go at once.
+
+She wished that she had not returned to the log house by the river.
+She had never fully admitted to herself the truth of her feeling
+toward Brian until Judy had so unexpectedly precipitated the
+crisis; but, she knew, now, that Judy was right, and that the real
+reason for her return was her love for him.  She knew, as well,
+that her very love,--which, once fully admitted and recognized by
+her, demanded with all the strength of her young womanhood the
+nearness and companionship of the mate her heart had chosen,--
+demanded, also, that she help him to keep that fine sense of honor
+and true nobility of character which had won her.
+
+She understood instinctively that,--now that she had confessed her
+love to herself,--she would, in spite of herself, tempt him in a
+thousand ways to throw aside that barrier which he had so honorably
+maintained between them.  Her heart would plead with him to
+disregard his better self, and come to her.  Her very craving for
+the open assurance of his love would tempt him, perhaps beyond his
+strength.  And, yet, she knew as truly that, if he should yield; if
+he should cast aside the barrier of his honor; if he should deny
+his best self, and answer her call, it would be disastrous beyond
+measure to them both.
+
+To save the fineness of their love, Betty Jo must go.  If it should
+be that they never met again, still she must go.
+
+But there were other currents moving in the river that night.  In
+the steady onward flow of the whole, Betty Jo's life-currents
+seemed to be setting away from the man she loved.  But other
+currents, unknown to the girl, who faced herself so honestly, and
+who so bravely accepted the truth she found, were moving in ways
+beyond her knowledge.  Directed and influenced by innumerable and
+unseen forces and obstacles, the currents which, combined, made the
+stream of life in its entirety, were weaving themselves together,--
+interlacing and separating,--drawing close and pulling apart,--only
+to mingle as one again.
+
+Betty Jo saw only Brian Kent and herself, and their love which she
+now acknowledged, and she had, as it were, only a momentary glimpse
+of those small parts of the stream.
+
+Betty Jo could not know of those other currents that were moving
+so mysteriously about her as the river poured itself onward so
+unceasingly to the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+JUDY'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+In spite of all their care, Brian and Betty Jo did not wholly
+convince Auntie Sue that there was no more in Judy's disappearance
+than the report from the neighbors indicated.  The dear old lady
+felt that there was something known to the young people that they
+were keeping from her; and, while she did not question their
+motives, and certainly did not worry,--for Auntie Sue never
+worried,--she was not satisfied with the situation.  When she
+retired to her room for the night, she told herself, with some
+spirit, that she would surely go to the bottom of the affair the
+next morning.
+
+It happened that Auntie Sue went to the bottom of the affair much
+sooner than she expected.
+
+It must have been about that same hour of the night when Betty Jo,
+after reaching her decision to go away, retired to her bed, that
+Auntie Sue was aroused by a low knocking at the open window of her
+room.
+
+The old teacher listened without moving, her first thought being
+that her fancy was tricking her.  The sound came again, and, this
+time, there could be no mistake.  Sitting up in her bed, Auntie Sue
+looked toward the window, and, at the sound of her movement, a low
+whisper came from without.
+
+"Don't be scared, Auntie Sue.  Hit ain't nobody but just me."
+
+As she recognized Judy's voice, she saw the mountain girl's head
+and twisted shoulders outlined above the window-sill.  A moment
+more, and Auntie Sue was at the window.
+
+"Sh-h-h!" cautioned Judy.  "Don't wake 'em up.  I just naturally
+got ter tell you-all somethin', Auntie Sue; but, I ain't a-wantin'
+Mr. Burns an' that there Betty Jo woman ter hear.  I reckon I best
+come through the winder."
+
+Acting upon the word, she climbed carefully into the room.
+
+"Judy, child!  What--?"
+
+The mountain girl interrupted Auntie Sue's tremulous whisper with:
+"I'll tell hit ter you, ma'm, in a little bit, if you'll just wait.
+I got ter see if they are sure 'nough a-sleepin' first, though."
+
+She stole silently from the room, to return a few minutes later.
+"They are plumb asleep, both of 'em," she said in a low tone, when
+she had cautiously closed the door.  "I done opened the doors ter
+their rooms, an' listened, an' shet 'em again 'thout ary one of 'em
+a-movin' even.  I'll fix the winder, now, an' then we kin make a
+light."
+
+Carefully, she closed the window and drew down the shade.  Then she
+lit the lamp.
+
+Auntie Sue, who was sitting on the bed, looked at the girl in
+bewildered amazement.
+
+With a nervous laugh, Judy fingered her torn dress and dishevelled
+hair.  "I sure am a sight, ain't I, ma'm?  I done hit a-comin'
+through the bresh in the dark.  But, don't--don't--look so kinder
+lost like; you-all ain't got no call ter be scared of me."
+
+"Why, Judy, dear, I'm not afraid of you.  Come, child; tell me what
+is the trouble."
+
+At the kindly manner and voice of the old gentlewoman, those black
+eyes filled with tears, which, for the moment, the mountain girl
+stoically permitted to roll down her thin sallow cheeks unheeded.
+Then, with a quick resolute jerk of her twisted body, she drew her
+dress sleeve across her face, and said:  "I--I--reckon I couldn't
+hate myself no worse'n I'm a-doin'.  Hit seems like I been mighty
+nigh plumb crazy; but, I just naturally had ter come back an' tell
+you-all, 'cause you-all been so good ter me."
+
+She placed a chair for Auntie Sue, and added:  "You-all best make
+yourself comfertable, though, ma'm.  I'm mighty nigh tuckered out
+myself.  Hit's a right smart way from where pap's a-livin' ter
+here, an' I done come in a hurry."
+
+She dropped down on the floor, her back against the bed, and
+clasped her knees in her hands, as Auntie Sue seated herself.
+
+"Begin at the beginning, Judy, and tell me exactly what has
+happened," said Auntie Sue.
+
+"Yes, ma'm, I will,--that's what I was aimin' ter do when I made up
+ter come back."
+
+And she did.  Starting with her observation of Brian and Betty Jo,
+and her conviction of their love, she told of her interview with
+Brian the night she warned him not to let Betty Jo return, and
+finished with the account of her attack on Betty Jo that morning.
+
+Auntie Sue listened with amazement and pity.  Here, indeed, was a
+wayward and troubled life-current.
+
+"But, Judy, Judy!" exclaimed the gentle old teacher, "you would not
+really have pushed Betty Jo into the river.  She would have been
+drowned, child.  Surely, you did not mean to kill her, Judy."
+
+The girl wrung her hands, and her deformed body swayed to and fro
+in the nervous intensity of her emotions.  But she answered,
+stubbornly:  "That there was just what I was aimin' ter do.  I'd a-
+killed her, sure, if Mr. Burns hadn't a-come just when he did.  I
+can't rightly tell how hit was, but hit seemed like there was
+somethin' inside of me what was a-makin' me do hit, an' I couldn't,
+somehow, help myself.  An'--an'--that ain't all, ma'm; I done
+worse'n that," she continued in a low, moaning wail.  "Oh, my God-
+A'mighty!  Why didn't Mr. Burns sling me inter the river an' let me
+be smashed an' drowned at Elbow Rock while he had me, 'stead of
+lettin' me git away ter do what I've gone an' done!"
+
+Auntie Sue's wonderful native strength enabled her to speak calmly:
+"What is it you have done, Judy?  You must tell me, child."
+
+The older woman's voice and manner steadied the girl, and she
+answered more in her usual colorless monotone, but still guarded so
+as not to awaken the other members of the household:  "Hit seemed
+like Mr. Burns ketchin' me, like he did, an' me a-seein' him with
+her in his arms, made me plumb crazy-mad, an' I 'lowed I'd fix hit
+so's he couldn't never have her nohow, so I--I--done told pap 'bout
+him bein' Brian Kent what had robbed that there bank, an' how there
+was er lot of reward-money a-waitin' for anybody that'd tell on
+him."
+
+Auntie Sue was too shocked to speak.  Was it possible that, now,
+when the real Brian Kent was so far removed from the wretched bank
+clerk; when his fine natural character and genius had become so
+established, and his book was--  No, no!  It could not be!  God
+could not let men be so cruel as to send Auntie Sue's Brian Kent to
+prison because that other Brian Kent, tormented by wrong environment,
+and driven by an evil combination of circumstances, had taken a few
+dollars of the bank's money!  And Betty Jo--  No, no!  Auntie Sue's
+heart cried out in protest.  There must be some way.  She would find
+some way.  The banker--Homer Ward!  Auntie Sue's mind, alert and
+vigorous as the mind of a woman of half her years, caught at the
+thought of her old friend and pupil.  She leaned forward in her
+chair over the girl who sat on the floor at her feet, and her voice
+was strong and clear with the strength of the spirit which dominated
+her frail body.
+
+"Judy, did you tell any one else besides your father?"
+
+"There wasn't nobody else ter tell," came the answer.  "An' pap, he
+'lowed he'd kill me if I said anythin' ter anybody 'fore he'd got
+the money.  He aims ter git hit all for hisself."
+
+"What will he do?  Will he go to Sheriff Knox?"
+
+"No, ma'm; pap, he 'lowed if he done that a-way, the Sheriff he'd
+take most of the money.  Pap's a-goin' right ter that there bank
+feller hisself."
+
+"Yes, yes!  Go on, Judy!"
+
+"You see, ma'm, I done remembered the name of the bank an' where
+hit was an' Mr. Ward's name an' all, on 'count of that there money
+letter what you done sent 'em an' us bein' so worried 'bout hit
+never gittin' there an' all that.  An' pap, he knows er man over in
+Gardner what's on the railroad, you see, what'll let him have money
+enough for the trip,--a licker-man, he is,--an' pap's aimin' ter
+make hit over ter Gardner ter git the money in time ter ketch that
+there early mornin' train.  Hit's a right smart way over the
+mountains, but I reckon's how pap'll make hit.  Soon's pap left, I
+got ter thinkin' what I'd done, an' the more I studied 'bout hit,--
+'bout Mr. Burns a-havin' ter go ter prison, an' 'bout you-all a-
+carin' for him the way you does, an' 'bout how happy you was over
+his book, an'--an'--how good you'd been ter me,--the sorrier I got,
+'til I just couldn't stand a-thinkin' 'bout hit no longer; an'--
+an'--so I come fast as I could ter tell you.  I 'lowed you'd make
+out ter fix hit some way so--Mr. Burns won't have ter go ter
+prison.  Couldn't you-all send--send a telegraph ter the bank man,
+er somethin'?  I'd git it inter Thompsonville for you, ma'm; an'
+Mr. Burns, he needn't never know nothin' 'bout hit."
+
+Auntie Sue was dressing when Judy finished speaking.  With a
+physical strength that had its source in her indomitable spirit,
+she moved about the room making the preparations necessary to her
+plan, and as she worked she talked to the girl.
+
+"No, Judy, a telegram won't do.  I must go to Homer Ward myself.
+That morning train leaves Thompsonville at six o'clock.  You must
+slip out of the house, and harness 'Old Prince' to the buggy as
+fast as you can.  You will drive with me to Thompsonville, and
+bring 'Prince' back.  You can turn him loose when you get near
+home, and he will come the rest of the way alone.  You must not let
+Mr. Burns nor Betty Jo see you, because they mustn't know anything
+about what you have done.  Do you understand, child?"
+
+"Yes, ma'm," said Judy, eagerly.  She was on her feet now.
+
+"You can go to the neighbors and find some place to stay until I
+return," continued Auntie Sue.
+
+"You don't need ter worry none 'bout me," said Judy.  "I kin take
+care of myself, I reckon.  But ain't you plumb seared ter go 'way
+on the cars alone an' you so old?"
+
+"Old!" retorted Auntie Sue.  "I have not felt so strong for twenty
+years.  There is nothing for me to fear.  I will be in St. Louis
+to-morrow night, and in Chicago the next forenoon.  I guess I am
+not so helpless that I can't make a little journey like this.
+Homer Ward shall never send my boy to prison,--never,--bank or no
+bank!  Go on, now, and get 'Prince' and the buggy ready.  We must
+not miss that train."  She pushed Judy from the room, and again
+cautioned her not to awaken Brian or Betty Jo.
+
+When she had completed her preparations for the trip, Auntie Sue
+wrote a short note to Betty Jo, telling her that she had been
+called away suddenly, and that she would return in a few days, and
+that she was obliged to borrow Betty Jo's pocket-book.  Grave as
+she felt the situation to be, Auntie Sue laughed to herself as she
+pictured the consternation of Betty Jo and Brian in the morning.
+
+Silently, the old lady stole into the girl's room to secure the
+money she needed and to leave her letter.  Then, as silently, she
+left the house, and found Judy, who was waiting with "Old Prince"
+and the buggy, ready to start.
+
+The station agent at Thompsonville was not a little astonished when
+Auntie Sue and Judy appeared, and, with the easy familiarity of an
+old acquaintance greeted her with, "Howdy, Auntie Sue!  What in
+thunder are you doin' out this time of the day?  No bad news, I
+hope?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Jackson," Auntie Sue answered easily.  "I'm just going
+to Chicago for a little visit with an old friend."
+
+"Sort of a vacation, eh?" returned the man behind the window, as he
+made out her ticket.  "Well, you sure have earned one, Auntie Sue.
+It's gittin' to be vacation time now, too.  Bunch of folks come in
+yesterday to stay at the clubhouse for a spell.  Pretty wild lot,
+I'd say,--wimmen as well as the men.  I reckon them clubhouse
+parties don't disturb you much, though, if you be their nearest
+neighbor,--do they?"
+
+"They never have yet, Mr. Jackson," she returned.  "Their place is
+on the other side of the river, and a mile above my house, you
+know.  I see them in their boats on The Bend, though, and once in a
+while they call on me.  But the Elbow Rock rapids begin in front of
+my place, and the clubhouse people don't usually come that far down
+the river."
+
+She turned to Judy, and, with the girl, went out of the waiting
+room to the platform, where she whispered:  "You must start back
+right away, Judy.  If your father is on the train, he might see
+you."
+
+"What if pap ketches sight of you-all?" Judy returned nervously.
+
+"He will not be so apt to notice me as he would you," she returned,
+"even if he does catch a glimpse of me.  And it can't be helped if
+he does.  I'll be in Chicago as quick as he will, and I know I will
+see Mr. Ward first.  Go on now, dear, and don't let Mr. Burns or
+Betty Jo see you, and be a good girl.  I feel sure that everything
+will be all right."
+
+With a sudden awkward movement, poor Judy caught the old
+gentlewoman's hand and pressed it to her lips; then, turning, ran
+toward the buggy.
+
+When the train arrived, the station agent came to help Auntie Sue
+with her handbag aboard, and she managed to keep her friend between
+herself and the coaches, in case Jap Taylor should be looking from
+a window.  As the conductor and the agent assisted her up the
+steps, the agent said:  "Mind you take good care of her, Bill.
+Finest old lady God-Almighty ever made!  If you was to let anything
+happen to her, you best never show yourself in this neighborhood
+again; we'd lynch you, sure!"
+
+The conductor found a good seat for his lovely old passenger, and
+made her as comfortable as possible.  As he punched her ticket, he
+said, with a genial smile, which was the voluntary tribute paid to
+Auntie Sue by all men:  "You are not much like the passengers I
+usually carry in this part of the country, ma'm.  They are mostly a
+rather rough-lookin' lot."
+
+She smiled back at him, understanding perfectly his intended
+compliment.  "They are good people, though, sir,--most of them.  Of
+course, there are some who are a little wild, sometimes, I expect."
+
+The railroad man laughed again, shaking his head.  "I should say
+so.  You ought to see the specimen I've got in the smoker.  I
+picked him up back there at Gardner.  Perhaps you have heard of
+him--Jap Taylor.  He is about the worst in the whole country, I
+reckon."
+
+"I have heard of him," she returned.  "I do hope he won't come into
+this coach."
+
+"Oh, he won't start anything on my train," laughed the man in blue
+reassuringly.  "He would never come in here, anyhow.  Them kind
+always stay in the smoker.  Seems like they know where they belong.
+He is half-scared to death himself, anyway; he is going to Chicago,
+too, and I'll bet it's the first time in his life he has ever been
+farther from these hills than Springfield."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BRIAN AND BETTY JO KEEP HOUSE.
+
+
+When Brian went to the barn the next morning he found "Old Prince"
+standing at the gate.  While he was still trying to find some
+plausible explanation of the strange incident, after unharnessing
+the horse and giving him his morning feed, an excited call from
+Betty Jo drew his attention.  With an answering shout, he started
+for the house.  The excited girl met him halfway, and gave him
+Auntie Sue's note.
+
+When Brian had read the brief and wholly inadequate message, they
+stood looking at each other, too mystified for speech.  Brian read
+the note, again, aloud, speaking every word with slow distinctness.
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" he ejaculated, at the close of the
+remarkable communication, staring at Betty Jo.
+
+"It wouldn't in the least surprise me if we were both hanged before
+night," returned Betty Jo.  "After this from Auntie Sue, I am
+prepared for anything.  What on earth DO you suppose has happened?"
+
+Brian shook his head:  "It is too much for me!"
+
+Together they went to the house, and the place seemed strangely
+deserted.  Every possible explanation that suggested itself, they
+discussed and rejected.
+
+"One thing we can depend upon," said Brian, at last, when they had
+exhausted the resources of their combined imaginations:  "Auntie
+Sue knows exactly what she is doing, and she is doing exactly the
+right thing.  I suppose we will know all about it when she
+returns."
+
+Betty Jo looked again at the note:  "'I will be back in a few
+days,'" she read slowly.  "'Be good children, and take care of
+things.'"
+
+Again, they regarded each other wonderingly.
+
+Then Betty Jo broke the silence with an odd little laugh:  "I feel
+like we were cast away on some desert island, don't you?"
+
+"Something like that," Brian returned.  Then, to relieve the strain
+of the situation, he added:  "I suppose 'Bess' will have to be
+milked and the chores finished just the same."
+
+"And I'll get breakfast for us," agreed Betty Jo, as he started
+back to the barn.
+
+In the safe seclusion of the stable, with no one but "Old Prince"
+and "Bess" to witness his agitation, Brian endeavored to bring his
+confused and unruly thoughts under some sort of control.
+
+"Several days; several days."  The words repeated themselves with
+annoying persistency.  And they--Betty Jo and he, Brian Kent--were
+to "take care of things";--they were to keep house together;--they
+were to live together, alone,--in the log house by the river,--
+alone.  She was even then preparing their breakfast.  They would
+sit down at the table alone.  And there would be dinner and supper;
+and the evening,--just for them.  He would work about the place.
+She would attend to her household duties.  He would go to his
+meals, and she would be there expecting him,--waiting for him.
+And when the tasks of the day were finished, they would sit on the
+porch to watch the coming of the night,--Betty Jo and he, Brian
+Kent--"What in God's name," the man demanded of the indifferent
+"Bess," did Auntie Sue mean by placing him in such a situation?
+Did she think him more than human?
+
+It had not been easy for Brian to maintain that barrier between
+himself and Betty Jo, even with the constant help of Auntie Sue's
+presence.  Many, many times he had barely saved himself from
+declaring his love; and, now, he was asked to live with her in the
+most intimate companionship possible.
+
+For the only time in his life Brian Kent was almost angry at Auntie
+Sue.  "By all that was consistent, and reasonable, and merciful,
+and safe," he told himself, "if it was absolutely necessary for the
+dear old lady to disappear so mysteriously, why had she not taken
+Betty Jo along?"
+
+In the meantime, while Brian was confiding his grievances to his
+four-footed companions in the barn, Betty Jo was expressing herself
+in the kitchen.
+
+"Betty Jo," she began, as she raked the ashes from the stove
+preparatory to building the fire, "it appears to me that you have
+some serious considering to do, and"--with a glance toward the
+barn, as she went out to empty the ash-pan--"you must do it quickly
+before that man comes for his breakfast.  You were very right, last
+night, in your decision, to go away.  It is exactly what you should
+have done.  I am more than ever convinced of that, this morning.
+But you can't go now.  Even if Auntie Sue had not taken your
+pocket-book and every penny in it, you couldn't run away with
+Auntie Sue herself gone.  If she hadn't wanted you to stay right
+here for some very serious reason, Betty Jo, she would have taken
+you with her last night.  Auntie Sue very pointedly and definitely
+expects you to be here when she returns.  And she will be away
+several days,--several days, Betty Jo."  She repeated the words in
+a whisper.  "And during those several days, you are to keep house
+for the man you love;--the man who loves you;--the man whom you
+must keep from telling you his love,--no matter how your heart
+pleads for him to tell you, you must not permit him to speak.  He
+will be coming in to breakfast in a few minutes, and you will sit
+down at the table with him,--across the table from him,--facing
+him,--Betty Jo,--just like--"
+
+She looked in the little mirror that hung beside the kitchen
+window, and, with dismay, saw her face flushed with color that was
+not caused by the heat of the stove.  "And you will be forced to
+look at him across the table, and he will look at you,--and--and
+you must not,--" she stamped her foot,--"you dare not look like
+THAT, Betty Jo.
+
+"And then there will be the dinner that you will cook for him, and
+the supper; and the evenings on the porch.  O Lord! Betty Jo, what
+ever will you do?  How will you ever save the fineness of your
+love?  If you were afraid to trust yourself with the help of Auntie
+Sue's presence, what in the world can you do without her--and you
+actually keeping house with him?  Oh, Auntie Sue!  Auntie Sue!" she
+groaned, "you are the dearest woman in the world and the best and
+wisest, but you have blundered terribly this time!  Why DID you do
+such a thing!  It is not fair to him!  It is not fair to me!  It is
+not fair to our love!
+
+"All of which,"--the practical Betty Jo declared a moment later,
+wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron, and going into the
+other room to set the table for breakfast,--"all of which, Betty
+Jo, does not in the least help matters, and only makes you more
+nervous and upset than you are.
+
+"One thing is certain sure," she continued, while her hands were
+busy with the dishes and the table preparations:  "If we can endure
+this test, we need never, never, never fear that anything nor
+anybody can ever, ever make us doubt the genuineness of our love.
+Auntie Sue has certainly arranged it most beautifully for Brian
+Kent and Betty Jo Williams to become thoroughly acquainted."
+
+Betty Jo suddenly paused in her work, and stood very still:  "I
+wonder," she said slowly,--"can it be,--is it possible,--what if
+Auntie Sue has brought about this situation for that very reason?"
+
+"Breakfast ready?" cried Brian at the kitchen-door, and his voice
+was so hearty and natural that the girl answered as naturally:  "It
+will be as soon as you are ready for it.  I forget, do you like
+your eggs three minutes or four?"
+
+They really managed that breakfast very well, even if they did sit
+opposite each other so that each was forced to look straight across
+the table into the face of the other.  Or, perhaps, it was because
+they looked at each other so straight and square and frankly honest
+that the breakfast went so well.
+
+And because the breakfast went so well, they managed the dinner and
+the supper also.
+
+"I have been thinking," said Brian at the close of their evening
+meal, looking straight into the gray eyes over the table, "perhaps
+it might be better for you to stay at neighbor Tom's until Auntie
+Sue returns.  I'll hitch up 'Old Prince' and drive you over, if you
+say.  Or, we might find some neighbor woman to come here to live
+with us, if you prefer."
+
+"You don't like my housekeeping, then?" asked Betty Jo.
+
+"Like it!" exclaimed Brian; and the tone of his voice approached
+the danger-point.
+
+Betty Jo said quickly:  "I'll tell you exactly what I think, Mr.
+Burns:  Auntie Sue said we were to be good children, and take care
+of things until she returned.  She did not say for me to shirk my
+part by going to neighbor Tom's or by having any one come here.
+Don't you think we can do exactly what Auntie Sue said?"
+
+"Yes," returned Brian, heartily; "I am sure we can.  And do you
+know,--come to think about it,--I believe the dear old lady would
+be disappointed in us both if we dodged our--well,--" he finished
+with emphasis,--"our responsibilities."
+
+And after that, somehow, the evening on the porch went as well as
+the breakfast and dinner and supper had gone.
+
+It was the second day of their housekeeping that Betty Jo noticed
+smoke coming from the stone chimney of the clubhouse up the river.
+She reported her observation to Brian when he came in from his work
+for dinner.  During the afternoon, they both saw boats on the quiet
+waters of The Bend, and at supper told each other what they had
+seen.  And in the evening they together watched the twinkling
+lights of the clubhouse windows, and once they heard voices and
+laughter from somewhere on the river as though a boating party were
+making merry.
+
+Two days later, Brian and Betty Jo were just finishing dinner when
+a step sounded on the porch, and a man appeared in the open
+doorway.
+
+The stranger was dressed in the weird and flashy costume considered
+by his class to be the proper thing for an outing in the country,
+and his face betrayed the sad fact that, while he was mentally,
+spiritually, and physically greatly in need of a change from the
+unclean atmosphere that had made him what he was, he was incapable
+of benefiting by more wholesome conditions of living.  He was, in
+fact, a perfect specimen of that type of clubman who, in order to
+enjoy fully the beautiful life of God's unspoiled world, must needs
+take with him all of the sordid and vicious life of that world
+wherein he is most at home.
+
+With no word of greeting, he said, with that superior air which so
+many city folk assume when addressing those who live in the
+country:  "Have you people any fresh vegetables or eggs to sell?"
+
+Brian and Betty Jo arose, and Brian, stepping forward, said, with
+a smile:  "No, we have nothing to sell here; but I think our
+neighbor, Mr. Warden, just over the hill, would be glad to supply
+you.  Won't you come in?"
+
+The man stared at Brian, turned an appraising eye on Betty Jo; then
+looked curiously about the room.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, removing his cap, "I thought, when I
+spoke, that you were natives.  My name is Green,--Harry Green.
+There is a party of us stopping at the clubhouse, up the river,
+there;--just out for a bit of a good time, you know.  We are from
+St. Louis,--first time any of us were ever in the Ozarks,--friends
+of mine own the clubhouse."
+
+"My name is Burns," returned Brian.  "We noticed your boats on the
+river.  You are enjoying your outing, are you?"
+
+Again the man looked curiously from Brian to Betty Jo.  "Oh, yes;
+we can stand it for awhile," he answered.  "We're a pretty jolly
+bunch, you see;--know how to keep things going.  It would kill me
+if I had to live here in this lonesome hole very long, though.
+Don't you find it rather slow, Mrs. Burns?"
+
+Poor Betty Jo's face turned fairly crimson.  She could neither
+answer the stranger nor meet his gaze, but stood with downcast
+eyes;--then looked at Brian appealingly.
+
+But Brian was as embarrassed as Betty Jo; while the stranger, as he
+regarded them, smiled with an expression of insolent understanding.
+
+"I guess I have made another mistake," he said, with a meaning
+laugh.
+
+"You have," returned Brian, sharply, stepping forward as he spoke;
+for the man's manner was unmistakable.  "Be careful, sir, that you
+do not make another."
+
+Mr. Green spoke quickly, with an airy wave of his hand:  "No
+offense; no offense, I assure you."  Then as he moved toward the
+door, he added, still with thinly veiled insolence:  "I beg your
+pardon for intruding.  I understand, perfectly.  Good-afternoon,
+Mr. Burns!  Good-afternoon, miss!"
+
+Brian followed him out to the porch; and the caller, as he went
+down the steps, turned back with another understanding laugh:  "I
+say, Burns, you are a lucky devil.  Don't worry about me, old man.
+I envy you, by Jove!  Charming little nest.  Come over to the club
+some evening.  Bring the little girl along, and help us to have a
+good time.  So-long!"
+
+Mr. Harry Green probably never knew how narrowly he escaped being
+manhandled by the enraged but helpless Brian.
+
+Brian remained on the porch until he saw the man, in his boat,
+leave the eddy at the foot of the garden and row away up the river.
+
+In the house, again, the two faced each other in dismay.
+
+Betty Jo was first to recover:  "I am sure that it is quite time
+for Auntie Sue to come home and take charge of her own household
+again.  Don't you think so, Mr. Burns?"
+
+And Brian Kent most heartily agreed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW.
+
+
+The members of the clubhouse party were amusing themselves that
+afternoon in the various ways peculiar to their kind.
+
+At one end of the wide veranda overlooking the river a group sat at
+a card table.  At the other end of the roomy lounging place, men
+and women, lying at careless ease in steamer-chairs and hammocks,
+were smoking and chatting about such things as are of interest only
+to that strange class who are educated to make idleness the chief
+aim and end of their existence.  On the broad steps leading down to
+the tree-shaded lawn, which sloped gently to the boat landing at
+the river's edge, still other members of the company were scattered
+in characteristic attitudes.  Across the river, in the shade of the
+cottonwoods that overhang the bank, a man and a woman in a boat
+were ostensibly fishing.  In a hammock strung between two trees, a
+little way from the veranda, lay a woman, reading.
+
+Now and then a burst of shrill laughter broke the quiet of the
+surrounding forest.  A man on the steps called a loud suggestive
+jest to the pair in the boat, and the woman waved her handkerchief
+in answer.  The card-players argued and laughed over a point in
+their game.  Some one shouted into the house for Jim, and a negro
+man in white jacket appeared.  When the people on the veranda had
+expressed their individual tastes, the one who had summoned the
+servant called to the woman in the hammock under the tree, "What is
+yours, Martha?"
+
+Without looking up from her book, the woman waved her hand, and
+answered, "I am not drinking this time.  Thanks."
+
+A chorus of derisive shouts and laughter came from the veranda.
+But the woman went on reading.  "Oh, let her alone!" protested some
+one, good-naturedly.  "She was going a little strong, last night.
+She'll be all right by and by, when she gets started again."
+
+The negro, Jim, had returned with his loaded tray, and was passing
+among the members of the company with his assortment of glasses,
+when some one called attention to Harry Green, who was just pulling
+his boat up to the landing after his visit to the little log house
+down the river.
+
+A boisterous chorus greeted the boatman:  "Hello, Harry!  Did you
+find anything?  You're just in time.  What'll you have?"
+
+With a wave of greeting, the man fastened his boat to the landing,
+and started up the slope.
+
+"He'll have a Scotch, of course!" said some one.  "Did anybody ever
+know him to take anything else?  Go and get it, Jim.  He'll be
+nearly dead for a drink after rowing all that distance."
+
+The woman in the hammock lowered her book, and lay watching the man
+as he came up the path toward the steps.
+
+Harry Green, who, apparently, was a person of importance among
+them, seated himself in an easy chair on the veranda, and accepted
+the glass proffered by Jim.
+
+"Did you find any eggs, Harry?" demanded one.  The man first
+refreshed himself with a long drink; then looked around with a grin
+of amused appreciation:  "I didn't get any eggs," he said; "but I
+found the nest all right."
+
+A shout of laughter greeted the reply.
+
+"What sort of nest, Harry?  Duck?  Turkey?  Hen?  Dove?  Or
+rooster?" came from different members of the chorus.
+
+Raising his glass as though offering a toast, he answered:  "Love!
+my children; love!"
+
+A yell of delight came from the company, accompanied by a volley
+of:  "A love-nest!  Well, what do you know about that!  Good boy,
+Harry!  Takes Harry to find a love-nest!  He's the boy to send for
+eggs!  I should say, yes!  Martha will like that!  Oh, won't she!"
+
+This last remark turned their attention toward the woman in the
+hammock, and they called to her:  "Martha!  Oh, Martha!  Come here!
+You better look after Harry!  Harry has found a love-nest!  Told
+you something would happen if you let him go away alone!"
+
+Putting aside her book, the woman came to join the company on the
+veranda.
+
+She was rather a handsome woman, but with a suggestion of coarseness
+in form and features, though her face, in spite of its too-evident
+signs of dissipation, was not a bad face.
+
+Seating herself on the top step, with her back against the post in
+an attitude of careless abandonment, she looked up at the negro who
+stood grinning in the doorway.  "Bring me a highball, Jim: you know
+my kind."  Then to the company:  "Somebody give me a cigarette."
+
+Harry tossed a silver case in her lap.  Another man, who sat near,
+leaned over her with a lighted match.
+
+Expelling a generous cloud of smoke from her shapely lips, she
+demanded:  "What is this you are all shouting about Harry having
+another love-nest?"
+
+During the answering chorus of boisterous laughter and jesting
+remarks, she drank the liquor which the negro brought.
+
+Then Harry, pointing out Auntie Sue's house, which was easily
+visible from where they sat, related his experience.  And among the
+many conjectures, and questions, and comments offered, no one
+suggested even that the man and the woman living in that little log
+house by the river might be entirely innocent of the implied
+charge.  For those who are themselves guilty, to assume the guilt
+of others is very natural and altogether human.
+
+In the moment's quiet which followed the arrival of a fresh supply
+of drinks, the woman called Martha said:  "But what is the man
+like, Harry?  You have enthused quite enough about the girl.
+Suppose you tell us about the man in the case."
+
+Harry gave a very good description of Brian Kent.
+
+"Oh, damn!" suddenly cried Martha, shaking her skirt vigorously.
+She had spilled some of the liquor from her glass.
+
+A woman on the outer edge of the circle whispered to her nearest
+neighbor, and a hush fell over the group.
+
+"Well," said Martha, drinking the liquor remaining in her glass,
+"why the devil don't we find out who they are, if we are so
+curious?"
+
+"Find out!  How?  We'll find out a lot!  What would you do,--ask
+them their names and where they are from?" came from the company.
+
+"It is easy enough," retorted Martha.  "There is that native girl
+that Molly picked up the day we landed here to help her in the
+kitchen.  She must belong in this neighborhood somewhere.  I'll bet
+she can tell us something.  What is her name?"
+
+"Judy,--Judy Taylor.  Great idea!  Good!  Send her out here, Jim,"
+responded the others.
+
+When the deformed mountain girl appeared before them, she looked
+from face to face with such a frightened and excited expression on
+her sallow, old-young features, and such a wild light in her black
+beady eyes, that they regarded her with silent interest.
+
+Judy spoke first, and her shrill monotone emphasized her excited
+state of mind:  "That there nigger said as how Missus Kent was a-
+wantin' ter see me.  Be ary one of youuns sure 'nough Missus Kent?"
+
+The group drew apart a little, and every face was turned from Judy
+to the woman sitting on the top step of the veranda with her back
+against the post.
+
+Judy went slowly toward the woman, her beady eyes fixed and staring
+as though at some ghostly vision.  The woman rose to her feet as
+Judy paused before her.
+
+"Be you-all Brian Kent's woman?" demanded Judy.
+
+The excited exclamation from the company and the manner of the
+woman suddenly aroused the mountain girl to a realization of what
+she had done in speaking Brian Kent's name.  With an expression of
+frightened dismay, she turned to escape; but the group of intensely
+interested spectators drew closer.  Every one waited for Martha to
+speak.
+
+"Yes," she said, slowly, watching the mountain girl; "I am Mrs.
+Brian Kent.  Do you know my husband?"
+
+Judy's black beady eyes shifted slyly from one face to another, and
+her twisted body moved uneasily.
+
+"No, ma'm; I ain't a-sayin' I knows him exactly.  I done heard tell
+'bout him nigh 'bout a year ago, when there was some men from the
+city come through here a-huntin' him.  Everybody 'lows as how he
+was drowned at Elbow Rock."
+
+"The body was never found, though," murmured one of the men in the
+group.
+
+"Who lives in that little log house over there, Judy?" Harry Green
+asked suddenly, pointing.
+
+"There?  Oh, that there's Auntie Sue's place.  I 'lowed everybody
+knowed that," returned the girl.
+
+"Who is Auntie Sue?" came the next question.
+
+One of the women answered, before Judy could speak:  "Auntie Sue
+is that old-maid school-teacher they told us about.  Don't you
+remember, Harry?"
+
+"Is Auntie Sue at home now, girl?" asked Mrs. Kent.
+
+Judy's gaze was fixed on the ground as she replied:  "I don't know,
+ma'm.  I ain't got no truck with anybody on yon side the river."
+
+"Is there any one living with Auntie Sue?" asked some one; and in
+the same breath from another came the question, "Who is Mr. Burns?"
+
+Judy jerked her twisted shoulders and threw up her head with an
+impatient defiance, as she returned shrilly:  "I'm a-tellin' youuns
+I don't know nothin' 'bout nobody.  Hit ain't no sort er use for
+youuns ter pester me.  I don't know nothin' 'bout hit, an' I
+wouldn't tell youuns nothin' if I did."
+
+And with this, the mountain girl escaped into the house.
+
+While her friends on the veranda were looking at each other in
+questioning silence, Mrs. Kent, without a word, turned and walked
+away into the woods.
+
+As she disappeared among the trees, one of the men said, in a low
+tone:  "You better go after her, Harry.  She is on, all right, that
+it's Brian Kent.  She never did believe that story about his death,
+you know.  There is no knowing what she'll do when she gets to
+thinking it all over."
+
+"It is a darned shame," exclaimed one of the women, "to have our
+party spoiled like this!"
+
+"Spoiled nothing," answered another.  "Martha is too good a sport
+to spoil anything.  Go on, Harry.  Cheer her up.  Bring her back
+here.  We'll all help get her good and drunk to-night, and she'll
+be all right."
+
+There was a laugh at this, and some one said:  "A little something
+wouldn't hurt any of us just now, I'm thinking.  Here, Jim!"
+
+Harry Green found Mrs. Kent sitting on the riverbank some distance
+above the boat landing.
+
+She looked up at the sound of his approach, but did not speak.
+Dropping down beside her, the man said:  "I'm damned sorry about
+this, Martha.  I never dreamed I was starting anything, or I would
+have kept my mouth shut."
+
+"It is Brian, all right, Harry," she answered, slowly.  "It is
+funny, but he has been on my mind all day.  I never dreamed that it
+was this part of the country where he was supposed to have been
+drowned, or I wouldn't have come here."
+
+"Well, what does it matter, anyway?" returned the man.  "I don't
+see that it can make any difference.  We don't need to go down
+there where he is, and it is damned certain that they won't call on
+us."
+
+Looking out over the river, the woman spoke as if thinking aloud:
+"This is just the sort of place he would love, Harry--the river and
+hills and woods.  He never cared for the city--always wanted to get
+away into the country somewhere.  Tell me, what is she really like?
+Does she look like--like--well,--like any of our crowd?"
+
+One by one, the man picked a number of pebbles from among the dead
+leaves and the short grass within reach of his hand, as he
+answered:  "Oh, I was just kidding when I raved about her to the
+bunch."  One by one, he flipped the bits of stone into the water.
+"She really doesn't amount to much.  Honestly, I hardly noticed
+her."
+
+The woman continued speaking as though thinking her thoughts aloud:
+"Brian was a good man, Harry.  That bank affair was really my
+fault.  He never would have done such a thing if I hadn't devilled
+him all the time for more money, and made such a fuss about his
+wasting so much time in his everlasting writing.  I'd hate to have
+him caught and sent to the 'pen' now."
+
+"You're a good sport, Martha," he returned heartily.  "I know just
+how you feel about it.  And I can promise you that there is not one
+of our crowd that will ever whisper a thing.  They are not that
+kind, and you know how they all like you.  Come, dear.  Don't
+bother your head about it any more.  I don't like to see you like
+this.  Let us go up to the house, and show them how game you are,--
+shall we?"
+
+He put his arm about her, but the woman gently pushed him away.
+"Don't do that, now, Harry.  Let me think."
+
+"That is just what you must not do," he retorted, with a laugh.
+"Thinking can't help matters.  Come, let us go get a drink.  That
+is what you need."
+
+She looked at him some time before she answered; then, with a quick
+movement, she sprang to her feet:
+
+"All right!  You're on!" she cried, with a reckless laugh.  "But
+you'll go some if you keep up with me to-night."
+
+And so, that evening, while Brian Kent and Betty Jo from the porch
+of the little log house by the river watched the twinkling lights
+of the clubhouse windows, the party with mad merriment tried to
+help a woman to forget.
+
+But save for the unnatural brightness of her eyes and the
+heightened color in her face, drink seemed to have little effect on
+Martha Kent that night.  When at a late hour the other members of
+the wild company, in various flushed and dishevelled stages of
+intoxication, finally retired to their rooms, Martha, in her
+apartment, seated herself at the window to look away over the calm
+waters of The Bend to a single light that showed against the dark
+mountainside.  The woman did not know that the light she saw was in
+Brian Kent's room.
+
+Long after Betty Jo had said good-night, Brian walked the floor in
+uneasy wakefulness.  The meeting with the man Green and his too-
+evident thoughts as to the relations of the man and woman who were
+living together in the log house by the river filled Brian with
+alarm; while the very presence of the man from the city awoke old
+apprehensions that in his months of undisturbed quiet in Auntie
+Sue's backwoods home had almost ceased to be.  Through Auntie Sue's
+teaching and influence; his work on his book; the growing
+companionship of Betty Jo and their love, Brian had almost ceased
+to think of that absconding bank clerk who had so recklessly
+launched himself on a voyage to the unknown in the darkness of that
+dreadful night.  But, now, it all came back to him with menacing
+strength.
+
+The man, Green, would talk to his companions of his visit to the
+log house that afternoon.  He would tell what he had discovered.
+Curiosity would lead others of the clubhouse party to call.  Some
+one might remember the story of the bank clerk, who was supposed to
+have lost his life in that neighborhood, but whose body was never
+found.  There might even be one in the party who knew the former
+clerk.  Through them the story would go back to the outside world.
+There would be investigations by those whose business it was never
+to forget a criminal who had escaped the law.
+
+Brian felt his Re-Creation to be fully established; but what if his
+identity should be discovered before the restitution he would make
+should be also accomplished?  And always, as he paced to and fro in
+his little room in the log house, there was, like a deep undercurrent
+in the flow of his troubled thought, his love for Betty Jo.
+
+It is little wonder that, to Brian Kent, that night, the voices of
+the river were filled with fearful doubt and sullen, dreadful
+threatenings.
+
+And what of the woman who watched the tiny spot of light that
+marked the window of the room where the re-created Brian Kent kept
+his lonely vigil?  Did she, too, hear the voices of the river?  Did
+she feel the presence of that stream which poured its dark flood so
+mysteriously through the night between herself and the man yonder?
+
+Away back, somewhere in the past, the currents of their lives in
+the onward flow of the river had drawn together.  For a period of
+time, their life-currents had mingled, and, with the stream, had
+swept onward as one.  Other influences--swirls and eddies and
+counter-currents of other lives--had touched and intermingled until
+the current that was the man and the current that was the woman had
+drawn apart.  For months, they had not touched; and, now, they were
+drawing nearer to each other again.  Would they touch?  Would they
+again mingle and become one?  What was this mysterious, unseen,
+unknown, but always-felt, power of the river that sets the ways of
+its countless currents as it sweeps ever onward in its unceasing
+flow?
+
+The door of her room opened.  Harry Green entered as one assured of
+a welcome.  The woman at the window turned her head, but did not
+move.  Going to her, the man, with an endearing word, offered a
+caress; but she put him aside.  "Please, Harry,--please let me be
+alone to-night?"
+
+"Why, Martha, dear!  What is wrong?" he protested, again attempting
+to draw her to him.
+
+Resisting more vigorously, she answered:  "Everything is wrong!
+You are wrong!  I am wrong!  All life is wrong!  Can't you
+understand?  Please leave me."
+
+The man drew back, and spoke roughly in a tone of disgust:  "Hell!
+I believe you love that bank clerk as much as you ever did!"
+
+"Well, and suppose that were true, Harry?" she answered, wearily.
+"Suppose it were true,--that I did still love my husband?  Could
+that make any difference now?  Can anything ever make any
+difference now?  You will tire of me before long, just as you have
+grown tired of the others who were before me.  Don't you suppose I
+know?  You and our friends have taught me many things, Harry.  I
+know, now, that Brian's dreams were right.  That his dreams could
+never be realized, does not make them foolish nor wrong.  His
+dreams that seemed so foolish--such impossible ideals--were more
+real, after all, than this life that we think so real.  WE are the
+dreamers,--we and our kind,--and our awakening is as sure to come
+as that river out there is sure of reaching the sea."
+
+The man laughed harshly:  "You are quite poetical, to-night.  I
+believe I like you better, though, when you talk sense."
+
+"I am sorry, Harry," she returned.  "Please don't be cross with me!
+Go now,--please go!"
+
+And something forced the man to silence.  Slowly, he left the room.
+The woman locked the door.  Returning to the window, she fell on
+her knees, and stretched her hands imploringly toward the tiny spot
+of light that still shone against the dark shadow of the mountain-
+side.
+
+Between the mighty walls of tree-clad hills that lifted their
+solemn crests into the midnight sky, the dark river poured the
+sombre strength of its innumerable currents,--terrible in its awful
+power; dreadful, in its mysterious and unseen forces; irresistible
+in its ceaseless, onward rush to the sea of its final and infinite
+purpose!
+
+And here and there on the restless, ever-moving surface of the
+shadowy, never-ending flood twinkled the reflection of a star.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+AT THE EMPIRE CONSOLIDATED SAVINGS BANK.
+
+
+The President of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank looked up
+from the papers on his desk as his secretary entered from the
+adjoining room and stood before him.
+
+"Well, George?"
+
+The secretary smiled as he spoke:  "Mr. Ward, there is an old lady
+out here who insists that you will see her.  The boys passed her on
+to me, because,--well, she is not the kind of woman that can be
+refused.  She has no card, but her name is Wakefield.  She--"
+
+The dignified President of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank
+electrified his secretary by springing from his chair like a
+schoolboy from his seat at the tap of the teacher's dismissing
+bell.  "Auntie Sue!  I should say she couldn't be refused!  Where
+is she?"  And before the secretary could collect his startled
+thoughts to answer, Homer T. Ward was out of the room.
+
+When the smiling secretary, the stenographers, and other attending
+employees had witnessed a meeting between their dignified chief and
+the lovely old lady, which strengthened their conviction that the
+great financier was genuinely human, President Ward and Auntie Sue
+disappeared into the private office.
+
+"George," said Mr. Ward, as he closed the door of that sacred inner
+sanctuary of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, "remember I am
+not in to any one;--from the Secretary of the Treasury to the
+Sheriff, I am not in."
+
+"I understand, sir," returned the still smiling George.  And from
+that moment until Homer T. Ward should open the door, nothing short
+of a regiment could have interrupted the interview between Auntie
+Sue and her old pupil.
+
+Placing the dear old lady tenderly in a deep, leather-upholstered
+chair, Mr. Ward stood before her as though trying to convince
+himself that she was real; while his teacher of those long-ago,
+boyhood days gazed smilingly up at him.
+
+"What in the name of all that is unexpected are you doing here,
+Auntie Sue?" he demanded; "and why is not Betty Jo with you?  Isn't
+the girl ever coming home?  There is nothing the matter with her,
+is there?  Of course not, or you would have wired me."
+
+It was not at all like the bank president to ask so many questions
+all at once.
+
+Auntie Sue looked around the private office curiously, then
+smilingly back to the face of the financier.
+
+"Do you know, Homer," she said with her chuckling little laugh,
+"I--I--am almost afraid of you in here.  Everything is so grand and
+rich-looking; and there were so many men out there who tried to
+tell me you would not see me.  I--I am glad I didn't know it would
+be like this, or I fear I never could have found the courage to
+come."
+
+Homer T. Ward laughed, and then--rather full-waisted as he was--
+went down on one knee at the arm of her chair so as to bring his
+face level with her eyes.
+
+"Look at me, Auntie Sue," he said; "look straight through me, just
+as you used to do years and years ago, and tell me what you see."
+
+And the dear old lady, with one thin soft hand on his heavy
+shoulder, answered, as she looked:  "Why, I see a rather naughty
+boy, whom I ought to spank for throwing spitballs at the old
+schoolroom ceiling," she retorted.  "And I am not a bit afraid to
+do it either.  So sit right over there, sir, and listen to me."
+
+They laughed together then; and if Auntie Sue wiped her eyes as the
+schoolboy obediently took his seat in the big chair at the banker's
+desk, Homer T. Ward's eyes were not without a suspicious moisture.
+
+"Tell me about Betty Jo first," the man insisted.  "You know,
+Auntie Sue, the girl grows dearer to me every year."
+
+"Betty Jo is that kind of a girl, Homer," Auntie Sue answered.
+
+"I suppose it is because she is all I have to love," he said, "but,
+you know, ever since Sister Grace died and left the fatherless
+little kid to me, it seems like all my plans have centered around
+her; and now that she has finished her school; has travelled
+abroad, and gone through with that business-college course, I am
+beginning to feel like we should sort of settle down together.  I
+am glad for her to be with you this summer, though, for the
+finishing touches; and when she comes home to stay, you are coming
+with her."
+
+Auntie Sue shook her head, smiling:  "Now, Homer, you know that is
+settled:  I will never leave my little log house by the river until
+I have watched the last sunset.  You know, my dear boy, that I
+would be miserable in the city."
+
+It was an old point often argued by them, and the man dismissed it,
+now, with a brief:  "We'll see about that when the time comes.
+But, why didn't you bring Betty Jo with you?"
+
+"Because," Auntie Sue answered, "I came away hurriedly, on a very
+important trip, for only a day, and it is necessary for her to stay
+and keep house while I am gone.  The child must learn to cook,
+Homer, even if she is to inherit all your money."
+
+"I know," answered the banker;--"the same as you make me work when
+I visit you.  But your coming to me sounds rather serious, Auntie
+Sue.  What is your trouble?"
+
+The dear old lady laughed, nervously; for, to tell the truth, she
+did not quite know how she was going to manage to present Brian
+Kent's case to Homer T. Ward without presenting more than she was
+at this time ready to reveal.
+
+"Why, you see, Homer," she began, "it is not really my trouble as
+much as it is yours, and it is not yours as much as it is--"
+
+"Betty Jo's?" he asked quickly, when she hesitated.
+
+"No! no!" she cried.  "The child doesn't even know why I am here.
+Just try to forget her for a few minutes, Homer."
+
+"All right," he said; "but you had me worried for a minute."
+
+Auntie Sue might have answered that she was somewhat worried
+herself; but, instead, she plunged with desperate courage:  "I came
+to see you about Brian Kent, Homer."
+
+It is not enough to say that the President of the Empire Consolidated
+Savings Bank was astonished.  "Brian Kent?" he said at last.  "Why,
+Auntie Sue, I wrote you nearly a year ago that Brian Kent was dead."
+
+"Yes, I know; but he was not--that is, he is not.  But the Brian
+Kent your detectives were hunting was--I mean--is."
+
+Homer T. Ward looked at his old teacher as though he feared she had
+suddenly lost her mind.
+
+"It is like this, Homer," Auntie Sue explained:  "A few days after
+your detective, Mr. Ross, called on me, this stranger appeared in
+the neighborhood.  No one dreamed that he was Brian Kent, because,
+you see, he was not a bit like the description."
+
+"Full beard, I suppose?" commented the banker, grimly.
+
+"Yes: and every other way," continued Auntie Sue.  "And he has been
+working so hard all winter; and everybody in the country respects
+and loves him so; and he is one of the best and truest men I ever
+knew; and he is planning and working to pay back every cent he
+took; and I cannot--I will not--let you send him to prison now."
+
+The lovely old eyes were fixed on the banker's face with sweet
+anxiety.
+
+Homer T. Ward was puzzled.  Strange human problems are often
+presented to men in his position; but, certainly, this was the
+strangest;--his old teacher pleading for his absconding clerk who
+was supposed to be dead.
+
+At last he said, with gentle kindness:  "But, why did you come to
+tell me about him, Auntie Sue?  He is safe enough if no one knows
+who he is."
+
+"That is it!" she cried.  "Some one found out about him, and is
+coming here to tell you, for the reward."
+
+The banker whistled softly.  "And you--you--grabbed a train, and
+beat 'em to it!" he exclaimed.  "Well, if that doesn't--"
+
+Auntie Sue clasped her thin hands to her breast, and her sweet
+voice trembled with anxious fear:  "You won't send that poor boy to
+prison, now, will you, Homer?  It--it--would kill me if such a
+terrible thing were to happen now.  Won't you let him go free, so
+that he can do his work,--won't you, Homer?  I--I--"  The strain of
+her anxiety was almost too much for the dear old gentlewoman's
+physical strength, and as her voice failed, the tears streamed down
+the soft cheeks unheeded.
+
+In an instant the bank president was again on his knees beside her
+chair.
+
+"Don't, Auntie Sue: don't, dear!  Why, you know I would do anything
+in the world you asked, even if I wanted to send the fellow up; but
+I don't.  I wouldn't touch him for the world.  It is a thousand
+times better to let him go if he is proving himself an honest man.
+Please, dear, don't feel so.  Why, I will be glad to let him off.
+I'll help him, Auntie Sue.  I--I--am as glad as you are that we
+didn't get him.  Please don't feel so about it.  There, there,--it
+is all right, now."
+
+So he comforted and reassured her until she was able to smile
+through her tears.  "I knew I could depend on you, Homer."
+
+A few minutes later, she said:  "And what about that man who is
+coming to claim the reward, Homer?"
+
+"Never you mind him!" cried the banker; "I'll fix that.  But, tell
+me, Auntie Sue, where is young Kent now?"
+
+"He is working in the neighborhood," she returned.
+
+He looked at her shrewdly.  "You have seen a lot of him, have you?"
+
+"I have seen him occasionally," she answered.  Homer T. Ward nodded
+his head, as if well pleased with himself.  "You don't need to tell
+me any more.  I understand, now, exactly.  It is very clear what
+has reformed Brian Kent; you have been up to your old tricks.  It
+is a wonder you haven't taken him into your house to live with
+you,--to save him from associating with bad people."
+
+He laughed, and when Auntie Sue only smiled, as though humoring him
+in his little joke, he added:  "By the way, has Betty Jo seen this
+latest patient of yours?  What does she think of his chances for
+complete recovery?"
+
+"Yes," Auntie Sue returned, calmly; "Betty Jo has seen him.  But,
+really, Homer, I have never asked her what she thought of him."
+
+"Do you know, Auntie Sue," said the banker, reflectively, "I never
+did believe that Brian Kent was a criminal at heart."
+
+"I know he is not," she returned stoutly.  "But, tell me, Homer,
+how did it ever happen?"
+
+"Well, you see," he answered, "young Kent had a wife who couldn't
+somehow seem to fit into his life.  Ross never went into the
+details with me, fully, because that, of course, had no real
+bearing on the fact that he stole the money from the bank.  But it
+seems that the youngster was rather ambitious,--studied a lot
+outside of business hours and that sort of thing.  I know he made
+his own way through business college before he came to us.  The
+wife didn't receive the attention she thought she should have, I
+suppose.  Perhaps she was right at that.  Anyway, she wanted a good
+time;--wanted him to take her out more, instead of spending his
+spare time digging away at his books.  And so it went the usual
+way,--she found other company.  Rather a gay set, I fancy; at least
+it led to her needing more money than he was earning, and so he
+helped out his salary, thinking to pay it back before he was
+caught, I suppose.  Then the crash came,--some other man, you
+know,--and Brian skipped, which, of course, put us next to his
+stealing.  I don't know what has become of the woman.  The last
+Ross knew of her she was living in St. Louis, and running with a
+pretty wild bunch,--glad to get rid of Brian, I expect.  She
+couldn't have really cared so very much for him.
+
+"Do you know, Auntie Sue, I have seen so many cases like this one.
+I have been glad, many times, that I never married.  And then,
+again, sometimes, I have seen homes that have made me sorry I never
+took the chance.  I am glad you saved the boy, Auntie Sue: I am
+mighty glad."
+
+"You have made me very happy, Homer," Auntie Sue returned.  "But
+are you sure you can fix it about that reward?  The man who is
+coming to claim it will make trouble, won't he, if he is not paid,
+somehow?"
+
+"Yes, I expect he would," returned the president, thoughtfully.
+"And my directors might have something to say.  And there are the
+Burns people and the Bankers' Association and all.  Hum-m-m!"
+
+Homer T. Ward considered the matter a few moments, then he laughed.
+"I'll tell you what we will do, Auntie Sue; we will let Brian Kent
+pay the reward himself.  That would be fair, wouldn't it?"
+
+Auntie Sue was sure that Brian would agree that it was a fair
+enough arrangement; but she did not see how it was to be managed.
+
+Then her old pupil explained that he would pay the reward-money to
+the man who was coming to claim it, and thus satisfy him, and that
+the bank would hold the amount as a part of the debt which Brian
+was expected to pay.
+
+Auntie Sue never knew that President Ward himself paid to the bank
+the full amount of the money stolen by Brian Kent in addition to
+the reward-money which he personally paid to Jap Taylor, in order
+to quiet him, and thus saved Brian from the publicity that surely
+would have followed any other course.
+
+It should also be said here that Judy's father never again appeared
+in the Ozarks; at least, not in the Elbow Rock neighborhood.  It
+might be that Jap Taylor was shrewd enough to know that his
+reputation would not permit him to show any considerable sum of
+money, where he was known, without starting an investigation; and
+for men of his type investigations are never to be desired.
+
+Or it is not unlikely that the combination of money and the city
+proved the undoing of the moonshiner, and that he came to his
+legitimate and logical end among the dives and haunts of his kind,
+to which he would surely gravitate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN THE ELBOW ROCK RAPIDS.
+
+
+The day following that night of Brian Kent's uneasy wakefulness was
+a hard day for the man and the woman in the little log house by the
+river.
+
+For Brian, the morning dawned with a sense of impending disaster.
+He left his room while the sky was still gray behind the eastern
+mountains, and the mist that veiled the brightness of the hills
+seemed to hide in its ghostly depths legions of shadowy spirits
+that from his past had assembled to haunt him.  The sombre aisles
+and caverns of the dimly lighted forest were peopled with shadowy
+memories of that life which he had hoped would never again for him
+awake.  And the river swept through its gray world to the crashing
+turmoil at Elbow Rock like a thing doomed to seek forever in its
+own irresistible might the destruction of its ever-living self.
+
+As one moving in a world of dreams, he went about his morning's
+work.  "Old Prince" whinnied his usual greeting, but received no
+answer.  "Bess" met him at the barnyard gate, but he did not speak.
+The sun leaped above the mountain-tops, and the world was filled
+with the beauty of its golden glory.  From tree and bush and
+swaying weed, from forest and pasture, and garden and willow-
+fringed river-bank, the birds voiced their happy greetings to the
+new day.  But the man neither saw nor heard.
+
+When he went to the house with his full milk-pail, and Betty Jo met
+him at the kitchen-door with her cheery "Good-morning!" he tried
+resolutely to free himself from the mood which possessed him, but
+only partially succeeded.  Several times, as the two faced each
+other across the breakfast table, Brian saw the gray eyes filled
+with questioning anxiety, as though Betty Jo, also, felt the
+presence of some forbidding spectre at the meal.
+
+After several vain attempts to find something they could talk
+about, Betty Jo boldly acknowledged the situation by saying:  "What
+in the world is the matter with us, this morning, Mr. Burns?  I am
+possessed with the feeling that there is some one or something
+behind me.  I want to look over my shoulder every minute."
+
+At her words, Brian involuntarily turned his head for a quick
+backward glance.
+
+"There!" cried Betty Jo, with a nervous laugh, not at all like her
+normal, well-poised self.  "You feel it, too!"
+
+Brian forced a laugh in return:  "It is the weather, I guess."  He
+tried to speak with casual ease.  "The atmosphere is full of
+electricity this morning.  We'll have a thunder-storm before night,
+probably."
+
+"And was it the electricity in the air that kept you tramping up
+and down your room last night until almost morning?" she demanded
+abruptly, with her characteristic opposition to any evasion of the
+question at issue.
+
+Brian retorted with a smile:  "And how do you know that I tramped
+up and down my room last night?"
+
+The color in Betty Jo's cheeks deepened as she answered, "I did not
+sleep very well either."
+
+"But, I surely did not make noise enough for you to hear in your
+room?" persisted Brian.
+
+The color deepened still more in Betty Jo's checks, as she answered
+honestly:  "I was not in my room when I heard you."  She paused,
+and when he only looked at her expectantly, but did not speak,
+continued, in a hesitating manner quite unlike her matter-of-fact
+self:  "When I could not sleep, and felt so as though there were
+somebody or something in the house that had no business here, I
+became afraid, and opened my door so I would not feel so much
+alone; and then I saw the light under the door of your room, and,--"
+she hesitated, but finished with a little air of defiance,--"and
+I went and listened outside your door to see if you were up."
+
+"Yes?" said Brian Kent, gently.
+
+"And when I heard you walking up and down, I wanted to call to you;
+but I thought I better not.  It made me feel better, though, just
+to know that you were there; and so, pretty soon, I went back to my
+room again."
+
+"And then?" said Brian.
+
+"And then," confessed Betty Jo, "whatever it was that was keeping
+me awake came back, and went on keeping me awake until I was simply
+forced to go to you for help again."
+
+Poor Betty Jo!  She knew very well that she ought not to be saying
+those things to the man who, while he listened, could not hide the
+love that shone in his eyes.
+
+And Brian Kent, as he thought of this woman, whom he loved with all
+the strength of his best self, creeping to the door of his room for
+comfort in the lonely night, scarcely dared trust himself to speak.
+At last, when their silence was becoming unbearable, he said,
+gently:  "You poor child!  Why didn't you call to me?"
+
+And Betty Jo, hearing in his voice that which told her how near he
+was to the surrender that would bring disaster to them both, was
+aroused to the defense.  The gray eyes never wavered as she
+answered, bravely:  "I was afraid of that, too."
+
+And so Betty Jo confessed her love that answered so to his need;
+but, in her very confession, saved their love from themselves.  If
+she had lowered her eyes--
+
+Brian Kent, in reverent acknowledgment, bowed his head before her.
+Then, rising, he walked to the window, where he stood for some time
+looking out, but seeing nothing.
+
+"It was that horrid man coming yesterday that has so upset us,"
+said Betty Jo, at last.  "We were getting on so beautifully, too.
+I wish he had gone somewhere else for his vegetables and eggs and
+things!"
+
+Brian was able to smile at this as he turned to face her again, and
+they both knew that,--for that time, at least,--the danger-point
+was safely past.
+
+"I wish so, too," he agreed; "but never mind; Auntie Sue will be
+home in a day or two, and then everything will be all right again."
+
+But when he had taken his hat and was starting out for the day's
+work, Betty Jo asked, "What are you doing to-day?"
+
+"I was going to work on the fence around the clearing," he answered.
+"Why?"
+
+"I--I--wish you could find something to do nearer the house," came
+the slow answer.  "Couldn't you work in the garden, perhaps?"
+
+"I should say I could!" he returned heartily.
+
+All that forenoon, as Betty Jo went about her household duties she
+felt the presence of the thing that filled her so with fear and
+dread.  With vigorous determination she scolded herself for being
+so foolish, and argued with herself that it was all a nervous fancy
+born of her restless night.  But, the next moment, she would start
+with a sudden fear and turn quickly as if to face some one whose
+presence she felt behind her.  And Brian, too, as he worked in the
+garden, caught himself often in the act of pausing to look about
+with nervous apprehension.
+
+During the noonday meal they made a determined effort to laugh at
+themselves, and by the time dinner was over had almost succeeded.
+But when Brian, as he pushed back his chair, said, jestingly,
+"Well, am I to work in the garden again this afternoon?" Betty Jo
+answered, emphatically, "Indeed you are!  I will not stay another
+minute in this house alone.  Goodness knows what I will do to-
+night!"
+
+There was no jest in the man's voice as he answered:  "I'll tell
+you what you will do to-night,--you will go to bed and you will go
+to sleep.  You will leave the door to your room wide-open, and I
+shall lie right there on that couch, so near that a whisper from
+you will reach me.  We will have no more of this midnight prowling,
+I promise you.  If any ghost dares appear, we--"
+
+The reassuring words died on Brian Kent's lips.  His eyes, looking
+over Betty Jo's shoulders, were fixed and staring, and the look on
+his face sent a chill of horror to the girl's heart.  She dared not
+move nor look around as he sat like a man turned to stone.
+
+A woman's laugh broke the dead silence.
+
+With a scream, Betty Jo sprung to her feet and whirled about.
+
+As one in a trance, Brian Kent arose and stood beside her.
+
+The woman, who stood in the open doorway, laughed again.
+
+Martha Kent's heavy drinking the night before, when her clubhouse
+friends in a wild debauch had tried to help her to forget, was the
+climax of many months of like excesses.  The mood in which she had
+sent the man Green from her room was the last despairing flicker of
+her better instincts.  Moved by her memories of better things,--of
+a better love and dreams and ideals,--she had spent a little hour
+or two in sentimental regret for that which she had so recklessly
+cast aside.  And then, because there was within her no foundation
+of abiding principle for her sentiment, she had again put on the
+character which had so separated her from the life of the man to
+whom she was married, indeed, but with whom she was never one.
+With the burning consciousness of what she might have been and of
+what she was ever tormenting her, she sank, as the hours passed,
+deeper and deeper into the quicksands of physical indulgence until,
+in her mad determination to destroy utterly her ability to feel
+remorse, she lost all mental control of herself, and responded to
+every insane whim of her drink-disordered brain.
+
+As she stood there, now, in the doorway of that little log house by
+the river,--face to face with the man and the woman who, though
+they were united in their love, were yet separated by the very fact
+of her existence,--she was, in all her hideous, but pitiful,
+repulsiveness, the legitimate creation of those life-forces which
+she so fitly personified.
+
+Betty Jo instinctively drew closer to Brian's side.
+
+"Hello, Brian, dear!" said the woman, with a drunken leer.  "Thought
+I'd call to see you in your charming love-nest that Harry Green
+raved so about.  Can't you introduce me to your little sweetheart?"
+
+"No?" she continued, and laughed again.  Then coming an unsteady
+step toward them, she added, thickly:  "Very well, Brian, old
+sport; you won't introduce me,--I'll have to introduce myself."
+She grinned with malicious triumph at Betty Jo:  "Don't be
+frightened, my dear.  It's all right.  I'm nobody of importance,--
+just his wife,--that's all,--just his wife."
+
+Betty Jo, with a little cry, turned to the man who stood as if
+stricken dumb with horror.  "Brian?" she said.  "Oh, Brian?"
+
+It was the first time she had ever addressed him by his given name,
+and Brian Kent, as he looked, saw in those gray eyes no hint of
+doubt or censure, but only the truest love and sympathy.  Betty Jo
+had not failed in the moment of her supreme testing.
+
+"It's true, all right, isn't it, Brian?" said Martha Kent.  "I'm
+his wife fast enough, my dear.  But you don't need to worry,--you
+two.  I'm a good sport,--I am.  I've had my fun.  No kick coming
+from me.  Just called to pay my respects,--that's all.  So-long,
+Brian, old sport!  Good-bye, my dear!"
+
+With an uncertain wave of her hand, she staggered through the
+doorway and passed from their sight.
+
+In the little log house by the river the two who had kept the
+fineness of their love stood face to face.
+
+For Betty Jo, the barrier which Brian Kent had maintained between
+them to protect her from his love was no longer a thing unknown.
+But the revelation, coming as it did, had brought no shadow of
+distrust or doubt of the man to whom she had so fully entrusted
+herself.  It had, indeed, only strengthened her faith in him and
+deepened her love.
+
+For one glorious triumphal moment the very soul of the man exulted
+in the truth which Betty Jo made known to him.  Then he turned
+slowly away, for he dared not trust himself to look at her a moment
+longer.
+
+With bowed head he paced up and down the room.  He went to the
+table which held Auntie Sue's sewing-basket, and fingered the
+trifles there.  Then, slowly, he passed through the open door to
+the porch, where Betty Jo, through the window, near which she
+stood, saw him look away over the river and the mountains.
+
+Suddenly, she saw him start, and stare intently at some nearer
+object that had caught his attention.  As Betty Jo watched, he
+moved to the edge of the porch, and, stooping, grasped the railing
+with his hands;--his head and shoulders were thrust forward; his
+lips were parted; his whole attitude was that of the most intense
+and excited interest.  Then, straightening up, he threw back his
+head, and laughed aloud.  But his laughter alarmed the girl, who
+ran to the door, crying, "What is it, Brian?"
+
+"Look!" he shouted, madly, and pointed toward the river.  "Look,
+Betty Jo!"
+
+Martha Kent, alone in one of the clubhouse boats, was rowing with
+drunken clumsiness toward the head of the Elbow Rock rapids.
+
+The woman's friends had missed her, and, guessing, from some remark
+she had made, where she had gone, had sent four men of the party
+after her; for they realized that she was in no condition to be
+alone in a boat on the river, particularly on that part of the
+stream near Auntie Sue's place.  After leaving Brian and Betty Jo,
+she had gone back to her boat in the eddy at the foot of the
+garden, and was pulling out into the stream when she saw her
+friends approaching.  With a drunken laugh, she waved her hand, and
+began rowing from them directly toward the swift water.  The men
+shouted for her to stop, and pulled with all their strength.  But
+the woman, taking their calls as a challenge, rowed the harder,
+while every awkward pull of the oars carried her nearer the deadly
+grip of the current.
+
+Betty Jo, as she reached Brian's side, and saw what was happening
+on the river, grasped the man's arm appealingly, with a cry:
+"Brian!  Brian!  She is going into the rapids!  She will be carried
+down to Elbow Rock!"
+
+But Brian Kent, for the moment, was beside himself.  All that he
+had suffered,--all that the woman out there on the river had cost
+him in anguish of soul,--all that she had taken from him of
+happiness,--came before him with blinding vividness; and now,--
+now,--in her drunkenness, she was making her own way to her own
+destruction.
+
+"Of course she is!" he shouted, in answer to Betty Jo.  "Her
+friends yonder are driving her to it!  Could anything be more
+fitting?"
+
+As though grasped by powerful unseen hands beneath the surface, the
+boat shot forward.  The woman, feeling the sudden pull of the
+current, stopped rowing, and looked about as if wondering what had
+happened.  Her friends, not daring to follow closer to the dangerous
+water, were pulling madly for the landing at the foot of the garden.
+The boat in the middle of the river moved faster.
+
+"Look, Betty Jo, look!" shouted the man on the porch, madly.  "It's
+got her now--the river has got her--look!"
+
+With a scream of fear, the woman in the boat dropped her oars, and
+grasped the gunwale of the little craft.
+
+Brian Kent laughed.
+
+Betty Jo shrank back from him, her eyes, big with horror, fixed
+upon his face.  Then, with a quick movement, she sprang toward him
+again, and, catching his arm, shook him with all her strength and
+struck him again and again with her fist.
+
+"Brian!  Brian!" she cried.  "You are insane!"
+
+The man looked down at her for an instant with an expression of
+bewildered astonishment on his face, as one awakened from a dream.
+He raised his hand and drew it across his forehead and eyes.
+
+The boat with the helpless woman was already past the front of the
+house.
+
+Betty Jo cried again as if calling the man she loved from a
+distance:  "Brian!  Brian!"
+
+With a sudden movement, the man jerked away from her.  The next
+instant, he had leaped over the railing of the porch to the ground
+below and was running with all his might toward the river, at an
+angle which would put him opposite or a little below the boat when
+he reached the bank.
+
+With a sob, Betty Jo followed as fast as she could.
+
+As Brian Kent raced toward the river's edge, the powerful current
+drew the boat with the woman into the first rough water of the
+rapids, and, as the skiff was shaken and tossed by the force that
+was sweeping it with ever-increasing speed toward the wild turmoil
+at Elbow Rock, the woman screamed again and again for help.
+
+The warring forces of the stream whirled the little craft about,
+and she saw the man who was nearing the bank.  She rose to her feet
+in the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,--calling his name,
+"Brian!  Brian!  Brian!"  Then the impact of the boat against a
+larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung
+to the thwarts with piteous cries.
+
+Betty Jo and the clubhouse men, who had overtaken her, saw Brian as
+he reached the river opposite the boat.  For a little way he raced
+the tumbling waters until he had gained a short distance ahead of
+the skiff; then they saw him, without an instant's pause, leap from
+the high bank far out into the boiling stream.
+
+Running along the bank, the helpless watchers saw the man fighting
+his way toward the boat.  One moment, he disappeared from sight,
+dragged beneath the surface by the powerful currents with which he
+wrestled.  The next instant, the boiling waters would toss him high
+on the crest of a rolling wave, only to drag him down again a
+second later.  But, always, he drew nearer and nearer the object of
+his struggle, while the rapids swept both the helpless woman and
+the tossing boat and the swimming man onward toward the towering
+cliff, and the thunder-roar of the mad waters below grew louder and
+louder.
+
+The splendid strength of arms and shoulders which Brian Kent had
+acquired by his months of work with his ax on the timbered
+mountain-side sustained him now in his need.  With tremendous
+energy, he breasted the might of the furious river.  To the
+watchers it seemed at times that it was beyond the power of human
+muscles to endure the terrific strain.  Then he gained the boat,
+and they saw him striving with desperate energy to drag it toward
+the opposite shore and so into the currents that would carry it
+past the menacing point of the cliff and perhaps to the safety of
+the quiet water below.
+
+All that human strength could do in that terrible situation, Brian
+Kent did.  But the task was beyond the power of mortal man.
+
+For an instant the breathless watchers on the bank thought there
+was a chance; but the waters with mad fury dragged their victims
+back, and, with terrific power, hurled them forward toward the
+frowning rocks.
+
+It was quickly over.
+
+In that wild turmoil of the boiling, leaping, seething, lashing,
+hammering waves, the boat, with the woman who crouched on her knees
+on the bottom, and the man who clung to the side of the craft,
+appeared for a second lifted high in the air.  The next instant,
+the crash of breaking wood sounded above the thundering roaring of
+the waters.  The man and the woman disappeared.  The wreck of the
+boat was flung again and again against the cliff, until, battered
+and broken, it was swept away around the point.
+
+Against the dark wall of rock Brian Kent's head and shoulders
+appeared for an instant, and they saw that he held the woman in his
+arms.  The furious waters closed over them.  For the fraction of a
+second, the man's hand and arm appeared again above the surface,
+and was gone.
+
+Betty Jo sank to the ground with a low cry of anguish, and hid her
+face.
+
+Another moment, and she was aroused by a loud shout from one of the
+men who had caught a glimpse of the river's victims farther out at
+the point of the rocky cliff.
+
+Springing to her feet, Betty Jo started madly up the trail that
+leads over the bluff.  The men followed.
+
+Immediately below Elbow Rock there is a deep hole formed by the
+waters that pour around the point of the cliff, and below this hole
+a wide gravelly bar pushing out from the Elbow Rock side of the
+stream forces the main volume of the river to the opposite bank.
+In the shallow water against the upper side of the bar they found
+them.
+
+With the last flicker of his consciousness, Brian Kent had felt his
+feet touch the bottom where the water shoals against the bar, and,
+with his last remaining strength, had dragged himself and the body
+of the woman into the shallows.
+
+Betty Jo was no hysterical weakling to spend the priceless seconds
+of such a time in senseless ravings.  The first-aid training which
+she had received at school gave her the necessary knowledge which
+her native strength of character and practical common sense enabled
+her to apply.  Under her direction, the men from the clubhouse
+worked as they probably never had worked before in all their
+useless lives.
+
+But the man and the woman whose life-currents had touched and
+mingled,--drawn apart to flow apparently far from each other, but
+drawn together again to once more touch, and, as one, to endure the
+testing of the rapids,--the man and the woman had not brought to
+the terrible ordeal the same strength.
+
+One was drawn into the Elbow Rock rapids by the careless indifference
+and the reckless spirit that was born of the life she had chosen; by
+her immediate associates and environment; and by the circumstances
+that were, at the last analysis, of her own making.
+
+The other braved the same dangers, strong in the splendid spirit
+that had set him against such terrible odds to attempt the woman's
+rescue.  From his work on the timbered mountain-side, from his life
+in the clean atmosphere of the hills, and from the spiritual and
+mental companionship of that little log house by the river, he had
+brought to his testing the splendid strength which enabled him to
+endure.
+
+Somewhere in that terrible conflict with the wild waters at Elbow
+Rock, while the man whose life she had so nearly ruined by her
+wantonness was fighting to save her, the soul of Martha Kent went
+from the bruised and battered body which Brian drew at last from
+the vicious grasp of the currents.
+
+But the man lived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+JUDY'S RETURN.
+
+
+In the early evening twilight of the day following the tragedy at
+Elbow Rock, Betty Jo was sitting on the porch, to rest for a few
+minutes in the fresh air, after long hours of watching beside
+Brian's bed.
+
+A neighbor woman had come to help, but Betty Jo would not leave the
+side of the man she loved as he fought his way slowly out of the
+dark shadow of the death that had so nearly conquered him.  Nor,
+indeed, would Brian let her go, for even in those moments when he
+appeared most unconscious of the life about him, he seemed to feel
+her presence.  All through the long, long hours of that anxious
+night and day she had watched and waited the final issue;--feeling
+the dark messenger very close at times, but gaining hope as the
+hours passed and her lover won his way nearer and nearer to the
+light;--courageous always;--giving him the best of her strength, so
+far as it was possible to give him anything;--making him feel the
+steady, enduring fullness of her love.
+
+At last, they felt that the victory was won.  The doctor, satisfied
+that the crisis was safely past, went his way to visit other
+patients.  By evening, Brian was resting so easily that the girl
+had stolen away for a few minutes, leaving the neighbor to call her
+if he should waken.
+
+Betty Jo had been on the porch but a short time when a step sounded
+on the gravel walk that led from the porch steps around the corner
+of the house.  A moment more, and Judy appeared.
+
+The mountain girl stopped when she saw Betty Jo, and the latter
+went to the top of the steps.
+
+"Good-evening, Judy!" said Betty Jo, quietly.  "Won't you come in?"
+
+Slowly, with her black beady eyes fixed on Betty Jo's face, Judy
+went up the steps.
+
+As the mountain girl reached the level of the porch-floor, Betty Jo
+drew a little back toward the door.
+
+Judy stopped instantly, and stood still.  Then, in a low tone, she
+said:  "You-all ain't got no call ter be afeared, Miss Betty Jo.
+You hain't never goin' ter have no call ter be scared of me again,
+never."
+
+"I am so glad for you to say that, Judy," returned Betty Jo,
+smiling.  "I don't want to be afraid of you, and I am not really;
+but--"
+
+"Ain't you-all plumb a-hatin' me for what I done?" asked Judy,
+wonderingly.
+
+"No, no; Judy, dear, I don't hate you at all, and you must know
+that Auntie Sue loves you."
+
+"Yes," Judy nodded her head, thoughtfully.  "Auntie Sue just
+naturally loves everybody.  Hit wouldn't be no more'n nature,
+though, for you-all ter hate me.  I sure have been poison-mean."
+
+"But that is all past now, Judy," said Betty Jo, heartily.  "Come
+and sit down?"  She started toward the chairs.
+
+But the mountain girl did not move, except to shake her head in
+refusal of the hospitable invitation.
+
+"I ain't a-goin' ter put my foot inside this house, nor set with
+you-all, nor nothin' 'til I've said what I done come ter say."
+
+Betty Jo turned back to her again:  "What is it, Judy?"
+
+"Auntie Sue done told me not ter let you-all er Mr. Burns see me
+'til she come back.  But I can't help hit, an' if I don't talk
+'bout that none, I reckon she ain't a-goin' ter mind so much.  You-
+all don't know that I seed Auntie Sue that night 'fore she went
+away, an' that hit was me took her ter the station with 'Old
+Prince,' an' brung him back, did you?"
+
+"No," said Betty Jo, "I did not know; and if Auntie Sue told you
+not to tell us about it, I would rather you did not, Judy."
+
+"I ain't aimin' ter," Judy returned; "but Auntie Sue don't know
+nothin' 'bout what's happened since she went away, an' hit's that
+what's a-makin' me come ter you-all."
+
+Betty Jo, seeing that the poor girl was laboring under some intense
+emotional stress, said, gently:  "What is it that you wish to tell
+me, Judy?  I am sure Auntie Sue will not mind, if you feel so about
+it."
+
+The mountain girl's eyes filled and the tears streamed down her
+sallow cheeks, while her twisted shoulders shook with the grief she
+could not suppress, as she faltered:  "My God-A'mighty!  Miss Betty
+Jo, I--I--didn't aim ter do hit!  I sure didn't!  'Fore God, I'd er
+let 'em kill me first, if I'd only had time ter think.  But hit--
+hit--was me what told that there woman how Mr. Burns was Brian
+Kent.  Hit's--hit's--me what's ter blame for gittin' her killed in
+the river an' him so nigh drowned.  O God!  O God!  If he'll only
+git well!
+
+"An' I ain't a-feelin' toward you-all like I did, Miss Betty Jo.  I
+can't no more.  I done left them clubhouse folks, after I knowed
+what has happened, an' all day I been hangin' 'round here in the
+bresh.  An' Lucy Warden she done told me, this afternoon, 'bout how
+you-all was takin' care of Mr. Burns, an' how you just naturally
+wouldn't let him die.  An'--an'--I kin see, now, what hit is that
+makes Auntie Sue and him an' you-all so different from that there
+clubhouse gang an' pap an' me.  An' I ain't a-wantin' ter be like I
+been, no more, ever.  I'd a heap rather jump inter the river an'
+drown myself.  'Fore God, I would!  An' I want ter come back an'
+help you-all take care of him; an' live with Auntie Sue; an'--an'--
+be a little might like youuns, if I kin.  Will you let me, Miss
+Betty Jo?  Will you?  I most know Auntie Sue would, if she was
+here."
+
+Before the mountain girl had finished speaking, Betty Jo's arm was
+around the poor twisted shoulders, and Betty Jo's eyes were
+answering Judy's pleading.
+
+And so, when Auntie Sue came home, it was Judy who met her at the
+station, with "Old Prince" and the buggy; and as they drove down
+the winding road to the little log house by the river, the mountain
+girl told the old gentlewoman all that had happened in her absence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE RIVER.
+
+
+Brian Kent recovered quickly from the effects of his experience in
+the Elbow Rock rapids, and was soon able again to take up his work
+on the little farm.  Every day he labored in the garden, or in the
+clearing, or at some task which did not rightly fall to those who
+rented the major part of Auntie Sue's tillable acreage.
+
+Auntie Sue had told him about her visit to the President of the
+Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, and of the arrangement made by
+the banker--as she understood it--for Brian's protection.  But
+while the dear old lady explained that Homer T. Ward was one of her
+pupils, she did not reveal the relation between Brian's former
+chief and Betty Jo.  Neither Auntie Sue nor Betty Jo, for several
+very good reasons, was ready for Brian to know the whole truth
+about his stenographer.  It was quite enough, they reasoned, for
+him to love his stenographer, and for his stenographer to love him,
+without raising any more obstacles in the pathway of their
+happiness.
+
+As the busy weeks passed, several letters came from the publishers
+of Brian's book,--letters which made the three in the little log
+house by the river very happy.  Already, in the first reception of
+this new writer's work, those who had undertaken to present it to
+the public saw many promises of the fulfillment of their prophecies
+as to its success.  When the third letter came, a statement of the
+sales to date was enclosed, and, that afternoon, Betty Jo went to
+Brian where he was at work in the clearing.
+
+When they were comfortably, not to say cozily, seated on a log in
+the shade at the edge of the forest, she announced that she had
+come for a very serious talk.
+
+"Yes?" he returned; but he really looked altogether too happy to be
+exceedingly serious.
+
+"Yes," she continued, "I have.  As your accredited business agent
+and--" she favored him with a Betty Jo smile--"shall I say
+manager?"
+
+"Why not managing owner?" he retorted.
+
+"I am glad you confirm my promotion so readily," she returned, with
+a charming touch of color in her cheeks, "because that, you see,
+helps me to present what I have to say for the good of the firm."
+
+"I am listening, Betty Jo."
+
+"Very well; tell me, first, Brian, just exactly how much do you owe
+that bank, reward-money and all, and Auntie Sue, interest and
+everything?"
+
+Brian went to his coat, which lay on a near-by stump, and returned
+with a small pocket account-book.
+
+"I have it all here," he said, as he seated himself close beside
+her again.  And, opening the book, he showed her how he had kept a
+careful record of the various sums he had taken from the bank, with
+the dates.
+
+"Oh, Brian, Brian!" she said with a little cry of delight, "I am so
+glad,--so glad you have this!  It is exactly what I want for my
+wedding present.  It was so thoughtful of you to fix it for me."
+
+Thus by a characteristic, Betty Jo turn she made the little book of
+painful memories a book of joyous promise.
+
+When they again returned to the consideration of business matters,
+Brian gave her the figures which answered her questions as to his
+total indebtedness.
+
+Again Betty Jo exclaimed with delight:  "Brian, do you see?  Take
+your pencil and figure quick your royalties on the number of books
+sold as given in the publishers' statement."
+
+Brian laughed.  "I have figured it."
+
+"And your book has already earned more than enough to pay
+everything," said Betty Jo.  "Isn't that simply grand, Brian?"
+
+"It is pretty 'grand,' all right," he agreed.  "The only trouble
+is, I must wait so long before the money is due me from the
+publishers."
+
+"That is exactly what I came to talk about," she returned quickly.
+"I tried to have it different when I made the arrangements with
+them, but the terms of payment in the contract are the very best I
+could get; and so I have planned a little plan whereby you--that
+is, we--won't need to wait for your freedom until the date of
+settlement with the publishers."
+
+"You have a plan which will do that?" Brian questioned, doubtfully.
+
+She nodded vigorously, with another Betty Jo smile.  "This is the
+plan, and you are not to interrupt until I have finished
+everything:  I happen to have some money of my very, very own,
+which is doing nothing but earning interest--"
+
+At the look on Brian's face, she stopped suddenly; but, when he
+started to speak, she put her hand quickly over his mouth, saying:
+"You were not to say a single word until I have finished.  Play
+fair, Brian, dear; please!"
+
+When he signified that he would not speak, she continued in her
+most matter-of-fact and businesslike tone:  "There is every reason
+in the world, Brian, why you should pay off your debt to the bank
+and to Auntie Sue at the earliest possible moment.  You can think
+of several reasons yourself.  There is me, for instance.
+
+"Very well.  You have the money to your credit with the publishers;
+but you can't use it yet.  I have money that you can just as well
+use.  You will make an assignment of your royalties to me, all in
+proper form, to cover the amount you need.  You will pay me the
+same interest my money is now earning where it is.
+
+"I will arrange for the money to be sent to you in the form of a
+cashier's cheque, payable to the banker, Homer T. Ward, so the name
+Brian Kent does not appear before we are ready, you see.  You will
+make believe to Auntie Sue that the money is from the publishers.
+You will send the cheque to Mr. Bank President personally, with a
+statement of your indebtedness to him properly itemized, interest
+figured on everything.  You will instruct him to open an account
+for you with the balance.  And then--then, Brian, you will give
+dear Auntie Sue a cheque for what you owe her, with interest of
+course.  And we will all be so happy!  And--and--don't you think I
+am a very good managing owner?  You do, don't you?"
+
+When he hesitated, she added:  "And the final and biggest reason of
+all is, that I want you to do as I have planned more than I ever
+wanted anything in the world, except you, and I want this so
+because I want you.  You can't really refuse, now, can you?"
+
+How, indeed, could he refuse?
+
+So they worked it out together as Betty Jo had planned; and when
+the time came for the last and best part of the plan, and Brian
+confessed to Auntie Sue how he had robbed her, and had known for so
+long that she was aware of his crime against her, and finished his
+confession by giving her the cheque, it is safe to say that there
+was nowhere in all the world more happiness than in the little log
+house by the river.
+
+"God-A'mighty sure helped me to do one good turn, anyway, when I
+jumped inter the river after that there book when Mr. Burns done
+throw'd hit away," commented the delighted Judy.
+
+And while they laughed together, Betty Jo hugged the deformed
+mountain girl, and answered:  "God Almighty was sure good to us all
+that day, Judy, dear!"
+
+It was only a day later when Auntie Sue received a letter from
+Homer T. Ward which sent the dear old lady in great excitement to
+Betty Jo.  The banker was coming for his long-deferred vacation to
+the log house by the river.
+
+There was in his letter a kindly word for his former clerk, Brian
+Kent, should Auntie Sue chance to see him; much love for his old
+teacher and for the dearest girl in the world, his Betty Jo.
+
+But that part of Homer T. Ward's letter which most excited Auntie
+Sue and caused Betty Jo to laugh until she cried was this:
+The great financier, who, even in his busy life of large
+responsibilities, found time for some good reading, had discovered
+a great book, by a new and heretofore unknown writer.  The book was
+great because every page of it, Homer T. Ward declared, reminded
+him of Auntie Sue.  If the writer had known her for years, he could
+not have drawn a truer picture of her character, nor presented her
+philosophy of life more clearly.  It was a remarkable piece of
+work.  It was most emphatically the sort of writing that the world
+needed.  This new author was a genius of the rarest and best sort.
+Mr. Ward predicted boldly that this new star in the literary
+firmament was destined to rank among those of the first magnitude.
+Already, among the banker's closest book friends, the new book was
+being discussed, and praised.  He would bring a copy for Auntie Sue
+and Betty Jo to read.  It was not only the book of the year;--it
+was, in Homer T. Ward's opinion, one of the really big books of the
+Century.
+
+"Well," commented Betty Jo, when they had read and reread that part
+of the letter, "dear old Uncle Homer may be a very conservative
+banker, but he certainly is more than liberal when he touches on
+the question of this new author.  Won't we have fun, Auntie Sue!
+Oh, won't we!"
+
+Then they planned the whole thing, and proceeded to carry out their
+plan.
+
+Brian was told only that Mr. Ward was coming to visit Auntie Sue,
+and that he must be busy somewhere away from the house when the
+banker arrived, and not come until he was sent for, because Auntie
+Sue must make a full confession to her old pupil of the part she
+had played in the Re-Creation of Brian Kent before Homer T. Ward
+should meet his former clerk.
+
+Brian, never dreaming that there were other confessions to be made,
+smilingly agreed to do exactly as he was told.
+
+When the momentous day arrived, Betty Jo met her uncle in
+Thompsonville, and all the way home she talked so continuously of
+her school, and asked so many questions about his conduct and life
+and their many Chicago friends, that the helpless bank president
+had no chance whatever of asking her a single embarrassing
+question.  But, when dinner was over (Brian had taken his lunch
+with him to the clearing), Homer T. Ward wanted to know things.
+
+"Was Brian Kent still working in the neighborhood?"
+
+Auntie Sue informed him that Brian was still working in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"Betty Jo had seen the bank clerk?" Betty Jo's uncle supposed.
+"What did she think of the fellow?"
+
+Betty Jo thought Brian Kent was a rather nice fellow.
+
+"And how had Betty Jo been amusing herself while her old uncle was
+slaving in the city?"
+
+Betty Jo had been doing a number of things:  Helping Auntie Sue
+with her housework; learning to cook; keeping up her stenographic
+work; reading.
+
+"Reading?"  That reminded him, and forthwith Mr. Ward went to his
+room, and returned with the book.
+
+And then those two blessed women listened and admired while he
+introduced them to the new genius, and read certain favorite
+passages from the great book, and grew enthusiastic on the new
+author, saying all that he had written in his letter and many
+things more, until Betty Jo could restrain herself no longer, but
+ran to him, and took the book from his hands, and, with her arms
+around his neck, told him that he was the dearest uncle in the
+world, because she was going to marry the man who wrote the book he
+so admired.
+
+There were long explanations after that:  How the book so highly
+valued by Banker Ward had actually been written in that very log
+house by the river; how Auntie Sue had sent for Betty Jo to assist
+the author with her typewriting; how the author, not knowing who
+Betty Jo was, had fallen in love with his stenographer, and,
+finally, how Betty Jo's author-lover was even then waiting to meet
+her guardian, still not knowing that her guardian was the banker
+Homer T. Ward.
+
+"You see, uncle, dear," explained Betty Jo, "Auntie Sue and I were
+obliged to conspire this little conspiracy against my man, because,
+you know, authors are funny folk, and you never can tell exactly
+what they are going to do.  After giving your heart to a genius as
+wonderful as you yourself know this one to be, it would be terrible
+to have him refuse you just because you were the only living
+relative of a rich old banker;--it would, wouldn't it, uncle,
+dear?"
+
+And, really, Homer T. Ward could find reason in Betty Jo's
+argument, which ended with that fatal trick question.
+
+Taking his agreement for granted, Betty Jo continued:  "And, you
+see, Auntie Sue and I were simply forced to conspire a little
+against you, uncle, dear, because you know perfectly well that,
+much as I needed the advantage of associating with such an author-
+man in the actual writing of his book, you would never, never have
+permitted me to fall in love with him before you had discovered for
+yourself what a great man he really is, and I simply had to fall in
+love with him because God made me to take care of a genius of some
+sort.  And if you don't believe that, you can ask Judy.  Judy has
+found out a lot about God lately.
+
+"You won't think I am talking nonsense, or am belittling the
+occasion will you, uncle, dear?" she added anxiously.  "I am not,--
+truly, I am not,--I am very serious.  But I can't help being a
+little excited, can I?  Because it is terrible to love a banker-
+uncle, as I love you, and at the same time to love a genius-man, as
+I love my man, and--and--not know what you two dearest men in the
+world are going to do to each other."
+
+And, at this, the girl's arms were about his neck again, and the
+girl's head went down on his shoulder; and he felt her cheek hot
+with blushes against his and a very suspicious drop of moisture
+slipped down inside his collar.
+
+When he had held Betty Jo very close for a while, and had whispered
+comforting things in her ear, and had smiled over her shoulder at
+his old teacher, the banker sent the girl to find her lover while
+he should have a serious talk with Auntie Sue.
+
+The long shadows of the late afternoon were on the mountain-side
+when Brian Kent and Betty Jo came down the hill to the little log
+house by the river.
+
+The girl had said to him simply, "You are to come, now, Brian;--
+Auntie Sue and Mr. Ward sent me to tell you."
+
+She was very serious, and as they walked together clung closely to
+his arm.  And the man, too, seeming to feel the uselessness of
+words for such an occasion, was silent.  When he helped her over
+the rail-fence at the lower edge of the clearing, he held her in
+his arms for a little; then they went on.
+
+They saw the beautiful, tree-clad hills lying softly outlined in
+the shadows like folds of green and timeworn velvet, extending
+ridge on ridge into the blue.  They saw the river, their river,
+making its gleaming way with many a curve and bend to the mighty
+sea, that was hidden somewhere far beyond the distant sky-line of
+their vision; and between them and the river, at the foot of the
+hill, they saw the little log house with Auntie Sue and Homer T.
+Ward waiting in the doorway.
+
+When the banker saw the man at Betty Jo's side, his mind was far
+from the clerk whom he had known more than a year before in the
+city.  His thoughts were on the author, the scholar, the genius,
+whose book had so compelled his respect and admiration.  This tall
+fellow, with the athletic shoulders and deeply tanned face, who was
+dressed in the rude garb of the backwoodsman, with his coat over
+his arm, his ax on his shoulder, and his dinner-pail in his hand,--
+who was he?  And why was Betty Jo so familiar with this stranger,--
+Betty Jo, who was usually so reserved, with her air of competent
+self-possession?  Homer T. Ward turned to look inquiringly at
+Auntie Sue.
+
+His old teacher smiled back at him without speaking.
+
+Then, Betty Jo and Brian Kent were standing before him.
+
+"Here he is, Uncle Homer," said the girl.
+
+Brian, hearing her speak those two revealing words, and seeing her
+go to the bank president, who put his arm around her with the
+loving intimacy of a father, stood speechless with amazement,
+looking from Homer T. Ward and Betty Jo to Auntie Sue and back to
+the banker and the girl.
+
+Mr. Ward, still not remembering the bank clerk in this re-created
+Brian Kent, was holding out his hand with a genial smile.
+
+As the bewildered Brian mechanically took the hand so cordially
+extended, the older man said:  "It is an honor, sir, to meet a man
+who can do the work you have done in writing that book.  It is
+impossible to estimate the value of such a service as you have
+rendered the race.  You have a rare and wonderful gift, Mr. Burns,
+and I predict for you a life of remarkable usefulness."
+
+Brian, still confused, but realizing that Mr. Ward had not
+recognized him, looked appealingly at Betty Jo and then to Auntie
+Sue.
+
+Auntie Sue spoke:  "Mr. Ward is the uncle and guardian of Betty Jo,
+Brian."
+
+"'Brian'!" ejaculated the banker.
+
+Auntie Sue continued:  "Homer, dear, Betty Jo has presented HER
+author, Mr. Burns;--permit me to introduce MY Brian Kent!"
+
+And Judy remarked that evening, when, after supper, they were all
+on the porch watching the sunset:  "Hit sure is dad burned funny
+how all tangled an' snarled up everythin' kin git 'fore a body kin
+think most, an', then, if a body'll just keep a-goin' right along,
+all ter onct hit's all straightened out as purty as anythin'."
+
+They laughed happily at the mountain girl's words, and the dear old
+teacher's sweet voice answered:  "Yes, Judy; it is all just like
+the river, don't you see?"
+
+"Meanin' as how the water gits all tangled an' mixed up when hit's
+a-boilin' an' a-roarin' like mad down there at Elbow Rock, an' then
+all ter onct gits all smooth an' calm like again," returned Judy.
+
+"Meaning just that, Judy," returned Auntie Sue.  "No matter how
+tangled and confused life seems to be, it will all come straight at
+the last, if, like the river, we only keep going on."
+
+And when the dreamy Indian-summer days were come and the blue haze
+of autumn lay softly over the brown and gold of the beautiful Ozark
+hills, the mountain folk of the Elbow Rock neighborhood gathered
+one day at the little log house by the river.
+
+It was a simple ceremony that made the man and the woman, who were
+so dear to Auntie Sue, husband and wife.  But the backwoods
+minister was not wanting in dignity, though his dress was rude and
+his words plain; and the service lacked nothing of beauty and
+meaning, though the guests were but humble mountaineers; for love
+was there, and sincerity, and strength, and rugged kindliness.
+
+And when the simple wedding feast was over, they all went down to
+the river-bank, at the lower corner of the garden, where, at the
+eddy landing, a staunch John-boat waited, equipped and ready.
+
+When the last good-byes were spoken, and Brian and Betty Jo put out
+from the little harbor into the stream, Auntie Sue, with Judy and
+Homer T. Ward, went back to the porch of the little log house,
+there to watch the beginning of the voyage.
+
+With Brian at the oars, the boat crossed the stream to the safer
+waters close to the other shore, and then, with Betty Jo waving her
+handkerchief, and the neighbor men and boys running shouting along
+the bank, swept down the river, past the roaring turmoil of the
+Elbow Rock rapids into the quiet reaches below, and away on its
+winding course between the tree-clad hills.
+
+"I am so glad," said Auntie Sue, her dear old face glowing with
+love, and her sweet voice tremulous with feeling, "I am so glad
+they chose the river for their wedding journey."
+
+
+
+
+Note.--This biographical sketch of Harold Bell Wright will give the
+reader a knowledge and understanding of the life-work, aims and
+purposes of the author as expressed through his books.  It is
+reprinted on these pages in response to popular demand.--The
+Publishers.
+
+
+
+
+HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
+
+A Biography
+
+By ELSBERY W. REYNOLDS
+
+
+The biography of a man is of importance and interest to other men
+just to the degree that his life and work touches and influences
+the life of his time and the lives of individuals.
+
+Only in a feeble way, at best, can the life story of any man be
+told on the printed page.  The story is better as it is written on
+the hearts of men and women and the man himself does the writing.
+
+He lives longest who lives best.  He who carves deepest against
+corroding time is he who touches with surest hand the greatest
+number of human hearts.
+
+He may or may not be a prodigy of physical strength.  He may or may
+not be a tower of mental energy.  But so long as this old world
+stands the man with an overpowering desire for all that is best for
+the race to be in the race, whose life is in tune with the divine
+and with the good that is within us all, whether he be orator,
+writer, artist or artisan, is a giant among men.
+
+That which we read makes a deeper and more lasting impression on our
+lives than that which we see or hear.  An author with millions of
+readers must be a great central power of thought and influence, at
+least, in his own day and generation.  We can understand the truth
+of this through a study of the aims and life purposes of Harold Bell
+Wright as expressed through his books and the circumstances under
+which they were written.  The wonderful popularity of this author is
+well estimated by the millions of copies of his books that have been
+sold.  This is also the greatest testimonial that can be given to
+the merit of his work.  The great heart of the reading public is an
+unprejudiced critic.  "Is not the greatest voice the one to which
+the greatest number of hearts listen with pleasure?"
+
+When a man has attained to great eminence under adverse circumstances
+we sometimes wonder to what heights he might have climbed under
+conditions more favorable.  Who can tell?  It is just as easy to say
+what the young man of twenty will be when a matured man of forty.
+The boy of poverty makes a man of power while the boy nursed in the
+lap of luxury makes a man of uneventful life, and, again, a life
+started with a handicap remains so through its possible three score
+years and ten and the life begun with advantages multiplies its
+talents ten and a hundred fold.
+
+So, after all, is not the heart of man the real man and is it not
+the guiding star of his ambition, his will, his determination, his
+conscience?
+
+Harold Bell Wright, the second of four sons, was born May 4, 1872,
+in Rome, Oneida County, New York.  From an earlier biographer we
+quote the following:
+
+"Some essential facts must be dug from out the past where they lie
+embedded in the detrital chronicles of the race.  Say, then, that
+away back in 1640 a ship load of Anglo-Saxon freedom landed in New
+England.  After a brief period some of the more venturesome spirits
+emigrated to the far west and settled amid the undulations of the
+Mohawk valley in central New York.  Protestant France also sent
+westward some Gallic chivalry hungering for freedom.  The fringe of
+this garment of civilization spread out and reached also into the
+same valley.  English determination and Huguenot aspiration touched
+elbows in the war for political and religious freedom, and touched
+hearts and hands in the struggle for economic freedom.  Their
+generations were a genuine aristocracy.  Mutual struggles after
+mutual aims cemented casual acquaintance into enduring friendship.
+William Wright met, loved and married Alma T. Watson.  To them four
+sons were born.  A carpenter contractor, a man who builds,
+contrives and constructs, is joined to a woman into whose soul of
+wholesome refinement come images of dainty beauty, where they glow
+and grow radiant.  With lavish unrestraint the life of this French
+woman pours itself into her sons.  The third child died in infancy.
+The eldest survived his mother by some thirteen years.  The
+youngest is a constructive mechanical engineer.  The second son is
+Harold Bell Wright.
+
+"During ten years this mother and this son live in rare intimacy.
+The boy's first enduring impression of this life is the vision of
+the mother bending affectionately over him while criticising the
+water color sketch his unpracticed fingers had just made.  Crude
+blendings and faulty lines were pointed out, then touched into
+harmony and more accurate perspective by her quick skill.  Together
+their eyes watched shades dance on sunny slopes, cloud shadows race
+among the hills or lie lazily in the valley below.
+
+"Exuberant Nature and ebullient boy loved each other from the
+first.  Alone, enravished, he often wandered far in sheer joy of
+living.  He brings, one day, from his rambles a bunch of
+immortelles which mother graciously receives.  Twenty years later
+the boy, man-grown, bows reverently over a box of withered flowers--
+the same bouquet the mother took that day and laid away as a
+precious memento of his boyish love.  Such was the first decade.
+
+"A ten-year-old boy, motherless, steals from harsh labor and yet
+harsher surroundings, runs to the home of sacred memories, clambers
+to the attic, and spends the night in anguished solitude.  This was
+his first Gethsemane.  For ten years buffeted and beaten, battling
+with adversity, sometimes losing but never lost, snatching learning
+here and there, hating sham, loving passionately, misunderstood,
+misapprehended, too stubbornly proud to ask apologies or make
+useless explanations, fighting poverty in the depths of privation,
+wrestling existence from toil he loathed, befriending many and also
+befriended much, but always face to face with the grim tragedy
+which has held part of the stage since Eden.
+
+"Such was the second decade.  The first was spent on hill sides
+where shadows only made the light more buoyant as they fled away.
+The second was passed in the valley where the shadow hung lazily
+till the cloud grew very black and drenched the soil.
+
+"Lured to college, he undertook to acquire academic culture.  As is
+well known, college life with its professorial anecdotes and jokes,
+its student pranks and grind, is routine drudgery and cob-webbery
+prose.  Bookish professors and conventional students rarely have
+just such an animate problem of French artistry and Bohemian
+experience to solve.  They did nobly, to be sure, but here was a
+mind which threw over them all the glamour of romance."
+
+Mr. Wright entered the Preparatory Department of Hiram College at
+the age of twenty, having previously accepted the faith and
+identified himself with the Christian Church in the little quarry
+town of Grafton, Ohio.  He continued active in the different
+departments of work in his church all during his school years with
+the ultimate result of his entering the ministry.
+
+Having no financial means, while in school he made his way by doing
+odd jobs about town, house painting and decorating, sketching, etc.
+After two years of school life, while laboring to gain funds in
+order that he might continue his schooling, he contracted from
+overwork and out-door exposure a severe case of pneumonia that left
+his eyesight badly impaired and his constitution in such condition
+that, to the present day, he has never fully recovered.
+
+Air castles were tumbled and hopes blasted when his physician
+advised him that it would be fatal to re-enter school for, at
+least, another year.  Whereupon, seeking health and a means of
+existence, starting from a point on the Mahoning river, he canoed
+with sketch and note book, but alone, down stream a distance of
+more than five hundred miles.  From this point, by train, he
+embarked for the Ozark mountains in southwest Missouri.  Here, for
+some months, while gradually regaining his strength, he secured
+employment at farm work, sketching and painting at intervals.
+
+Once more, he found himself on bed-rock, taking his last cent to
+pay express charges back to Ohio on some finished pictures, but,
+this time, fortune smiled promptly with a good check by return
+mail.
+
+It was while in the Ozarks that Harold Bell Wright preached his
+first sermon.  Being a regular attendant at the services, held in
+the little mountain log school house, he was asked to talk to the
+people, one Sunday, when the regular preacher had failed to appear.
+
+From this Sunday morning talk, that could hardly be called a
+sermon, and others that followed, he came to feel that he could do
+more good in the ministry than he could in any other field of
+labor, and soon thereafter accepted a regular pastorate at Pierce
+City, Missouri, at a yearly salary of four hundred dollars.  True
+to a resolve, that his work should be that through which he could
+help the most people, he had now chosen the ministry.  A further
+resolve that he would give up this ministry, chosen with such
+earnest conviction, should another field of labor offer more
+extensive measures for reaching mankind, took him, in later years,
+into the field of literature.  He left the ministry with many
+regrets but with the same earnest conviction with which he had
+earlier chosen it.
+
+Following the publication of "The Shepherd of the Hills" his
+publishers assured him that he could secure greater results from
+his pen rather than his pulpit and prevailed upon him to henceforth
+make literature his life work.  This was in every way consistent
+with his teaching that every man's ministry is that work through
+which he can accomplish the greatest good.
+
+In the battle of life there is always the higher ground that the
+many covet but few attain.  In reaching this height Mr. Wright has
+given to a multitude, his time, strength and substance, that they,
+too, might further advance.  He is companionable, loving and loyal
+to his friends.  He hates sham and hypocrisy and any attempt to
+glorify one's self by means other than the fruits of one's own
+labor.
+
+This boy, who, from the death of his mother, was driven into a hand
+to hand struggle with life for a bare existence, was necessarily
+forced into contact with much that was vicious and corrupt.  But he
+in no way became a part of it.  That same inherent love for mental
+cleanliness and spiritual truths that has so distinguished the
+works of the man kept the boy unstained in his unfortunate
+environment.
+
+Mr. Wright resigned his charge at Pierce City for the larger work
+at Pittsburg, Kansas.  In the second year of his pastorate--1899--
+he married Frances E. Long in Buffalo, New York.  This union of
+love had its beginning back in the school days at Hiram.  Unto them
+have been born three sons, Gilbert Munger, 1901, Paul Williams,
+1902, and Norman Hall, 1910.
+
+In Pittsburg, Mr. Wright received enthusiastic support from his
+church people.  Finances were soon in a satisfactory condition, and
+church attendance reached the capacity of the building, but still
+the young pastor was not satisfied.  Pittsburg was a mining town, a
+young men's town.  A little city with saloons and brothels doing
+business on every hand.  His soul was on fire for his church to do
+a larger work and, with the hope of arousing his people, he
+conceived the idea of writing "That Printer of Udell's," planning
+to read the story, by installments, on special evenings of
+successive weeks, to his congregation.
+
+Pittsburg was made the principal scene and the church of the story
+was the kind of church he wanted his Pittsburg charge to be.  The
+teachings set forth, through the preacher of the story, in the
+latter half of the book, are the identical things the author was
+preaching.  The first chapters of the story are very largely
+colored by Mr. Wright's early life, but they are by no means
+autobiographical.
+
+"That Printer of Udell's" was written without thought or intention
+of offering it for publication.  During the author's ministry he
+made some of the warmest and most abiding friendships of his life,
+and it was through certain of these friends that he was persuaded
+from reading the story, as intended, but to offer it for
+publication, giving it, thus, a wider usefulness.
+
+Having a leave of absence of several weeks from his church during
+the winter of 1901-2 he accepted an invitation from the pastor of a
+Chicago church to hold a special meeting, and it was during this
+meeting that the author and his publisher met for the first time.
+Mr. Wright delivered a sermon entitled "Sculptors of Life" that was
+so impressive that I sought him out with entreaties to repeat his
+sermon as a lecture to a certain company of young people.
+
+The acquaintance thus begun very quickly became one of friendship,
+without any knowledge or thought that it would in time lead to a
+co-operative life work, and when the author later offered his book
+for publication it was without request or thought of financial
+remuneration.  Mr. Wright, however, was given a contract paying him
+the highest royalty that was being paid for any author's first
+book.
+
+"That Printer of Udell's" was written almost entirely in the late
+hours of the night and the very early hours of the morning.  Great
+demands were being made on the author's time in the way of requests
+for officiating and speaking at public and civic functions in
+addition to the now heavy requirements of his church.  His
+aggressive activities, backed by his splendid spirit, fearlessness
+and courage in combating the evils of his little city made for him
+a host of admirers, alike, among his enemies and friends.  When he
+left to accept a pastorate in Kansas City, Missouri, his resignation
+was not accepted.
+
+After one year in Kansas City he found that he was not physically
+able to carry out the great city work as he had dreamed it and
+planned it, on a scale that would satisfy his longings for service,
+and it made him seriously consider whether there was not some other
+way that would more equally measure with his strength.  He went
+again to the Ozarks, this time for rest and meditation, and while
+there began writing "The Shepherd of the Hills."  This Story has a
+peculiar significance for the author.  He feels toward it as he can
+not feel for any of his other books.  "The Shepherd of the Hills"
+was written as a test.  The strength of the message he was able to
+put into the story and the response it should find in the hearts
+of men and women was to decide for him his ministry henceforth,
+whether he would teach the precepts of the Man of Galilee by voice
+or pen.  It was a testing time that bore fruit not only in this
+simple, sweet story, that to quote an eminent divine, "is one of
+the greatest sermons of our day," but resulted as well in the
+splendid volumes that have followed.
+
+"The Shepherd of the Hills" was finished during the year of his
+pastorate at Lebanon, Missouri, and but for the sympathy,
+encouragement and helpful understanding of his church officers and
+membership, it is doubtful if the story could ever have been
+completed.  When Mr. Wright delivered the manuscript to his
+publishers the first of the year, 1907, for publication the next
+fall, he had accepted the pastorate of the Christian Church in
+Redlands, California, hoping this land of sunshine would give him a
+larger measure of health.
+
+Some months later, resigning his Redlands pastorate, he went to the
+Imperial Valley and there, the following year, wrote "The Calling
+of Dan Matthews."  The church and its problems were weighing on the
+author and affecting his life no less than when he was in the
+ministry and it was only natural that he should give to the world
+"a picture that is true to the four corners of the earth."  Every
+incident in the story has its counterpart in real life and, with
+but few exceptions, came under the author's personal observation.
+He did not get the real pleasure out of writing "The Calling of Dan
+Matthews" that he did the story which preceded it.  But he could
+not, try as he would, escape it.
+
+The publication of "The Calling of Dan Matthews" in the fall of
+1909 was just two years after the publication of "The Shepherd of
+the Hills."
+
+"The Winning of Barbara Worth" required more time and effort in the
+collecting of material than any book the author had written, but
+probably gave him, at least, as much pleasure.  He is very careful
+with regard to descriptive detail, and even while writing "The
+Calling of Dan Matthews" he was making a study of the desert and
+this great reclamation project.  Before sending his manuscript for
+publication he had it checked over by the best engineers on the
+Pacific coast for inaccuracies in any of his descriptions that
+involved engineering or reclamation problems.
+
+"The Winning of Barbara Worth" bears the distinction, without
+doubt, of being the only book ever published that called its
+publisher and illustrator from a distance of two and three thousand
+miles, into the heart of a great desert, for a consultation with
+its author.  This story of the Imperial Valley and its reclamation
+was written in the same study as was "The Calling of Dan Matthews."
+A study of rude construction, about eighteen by thirty-five feet,
+with thatched roof and outside covering of native arrow-weed and
+built entirely by the author himself.
+
+When Mr. Wright finished "The Winning of Barbara Worth"--so named
+in honor of Ruth Barbara Reynolds--he was a sick man.  He often
+worked the night through, overtaxing his nerve and strength.  For
+several months he virtually dwelt within the four walls of his
+study and for a time it was feared he would not live to finish the
+book.  He wrote the last chapters while confined to his bed, after
+which he was taken by easy stages, through the kindness of friends,
+to that part of Northern Arizona that is so delightful to all
+lovers of the out-of-doors.  In this bracing mile-high atmosphere
+he soon grew well and strong, almost to ruggedness, and on the day
+his book was published he was riding in a wild-horse chase over a
+country wild and rough where the writer of this sketch would only
+care to go, carefully picking his way, on foot.  So it was weeks
+after publication before the author saw the first bound copy of his
+book.  During these summer and fall months, while regaining his
+strength, he was busy with sketch and note book collecting
+material, for this part of Arizona is the scene of his novel "When
+a Man's a Man."
+
+"Their Yesterdays" was written in Tucson, Arizona, and was
+published in the fall of 1912, just one year after the publication
+of "The Winning of Barbara Worth."  In order to write this story,
+with the least possible strain on his nerves and vitality, Mr.
+Wright secluded himself in a little cottage purchased especially
+for this work.  His material was collected from the observations of
+his thoughtful years and his intimate knowledge of human hearts.
+This book is, perhaps, more representative of the real Harold Bell
+Wright than anything he has done.  It is the true presentation of
+his views on life, love and religion.  I once asked Mr. Wright, in
+behalf of the faculty, to deliver an address to a graduating class
+of some twenty-odd young men of the Morgan Park Academy (Chicago).
+He was very busy and I suggested that without special effort he
+make the commonplace remarks that one so often hears on like
+occasions.  For the first time that I remember he somewhat
+impatiently resented a suggestion from me, saying "These young men
+are on the threshold of life and the very best that is within me is
+due to them.  I can give to them only such a message as I would,
+were I to stand before judgment on the morrow."  It was with just
+this spirit that the author wrote "Their Yesterdays."
+
+Following "Their Yesterdays" the next book in order of publication
+was "The Eyes of the World," published in the fall of 1914.  It was
+written in the same arrow-weed study on Tecolote Rancho in the
+Imperial Valley where he wrote "The Calling of Dan Matthews" and
+"The Winning of Barbara Worth."  Being fully in sympathy with the
+author's purpose in writing this story, the campaign of advertising
+was of such educational character and so eventful in many ways,
+that it will long be remembered by authors, publishers and reading
+public, and, we trust, make for cleaner books and pictures.
+
+As it was in the writing of "The Calling of Dan Matthews" so it was
+in the writing of "The Eyes of the World," the sense of duty stood
+highest.  The modern trend in books and music and art and drama had
+so incensed the author that "The Eyes of the World" was the result
+of his all impelling desire for cleaner living and thinking.  As is
+true of all writers, there are sometimes those who fail to catch
+the message in Mr. Wright's books.  He is occasionally misunderstood,
+and that was especially true with "The Eyes of the World."  To the
+great majority of people, clean living and thinking, the message was
+not to be misinterpreted and to them the book is blessed.  To that
+small minority it was convicting and, from a few such, it brought
+forth condemnation which, in a fellow author here and there, was
+pronounced and emphasized by envy and jealousy.  To critics of this
+class Mr. Wright makes no reply and is not in the least disturbed.
+
+"The Uncrowned King," a small volume--an allegory--published in
+1910, to me, is one of the most delightful of Mr. Wright's books.
+Possibly, it has an added charm because of certain peculiar
+conditions.  It was written in Redlands, California, during the
+winter of 1909-10, although the notion for the little volume
+occurred to the author while living in Kansas City.  It was one of
+those times when the longing and will to do a work greater than the
+physical would permit seemed almost overpowering when, unconsciously
+coming to his aid, a young woman talking to a company of Christian
+Endeavorers chanced to remark, "After all, the real kings of earth
+are seldom crowned."  All through the evening service thoughts that
+this inspired kept running through the author's mind and late that
+same night he wrote the outline which was only completed some years
+later and given to his publishers to enrich the world.
+
+His first four novels in order of publication have been dramatized
+and enjoyed by thousands from before the footlights and it has been
+a delight to renew acquaintances with old friends in this way.  It
+remained for "The Eyes of the World" to be the first of his books
+to be presented in a feature production of motion pictures.
+
+The likes and dislikes of Harold Bell Wright are quite pronounced.
+He is unpretending, cares not for the lime-light and avoids
+interviews for the public press.  Loud, boisterous conversation is
+but little less offensive to him than vulgarity in speech or
+action.  His friends are strong, clean-minded men who are doing
+things in the world and are as necessary to his being as the air to
+his existence, and his generosity to them is no less marked than
+his caring and providing for his family, which is almost a passion.
+He is extremely fond of most forms of out-door life.  The desert
+with its vast expanse, fierce solitude and varied colors is no less
+attractive to him than the peaceful quiet of wooded dells, the
+beauty of flowering meadows or the rugged mountains with their
+roaring trout streams that furnish him hours of sport with rod and
+line.  He enjoys hunting, horse-back riding or long tramps afoot.
+But when there is work to be done it is the one thing that bulks
+largest and all else must wait.
+
+After finishing "The Eyes of the World," Mr. Wright embarked on the
+building of a home in the Santa Monica mountains near Hollywood,
+California.  So in the summer of 1915 the little family of five
+began making their residence in the new canyon home, one of
+nature's delightful spots.
+
+Then again, the author went into camp in the Arizona desert while
+writing "When a Man's a Man."  For he finds it very helpful to live
+in the atmosphere of his story while doing the actual writing and
+he also avoids frequent interruption.  I think he got more real
+enjoyment out of this story than any he has previously done.  It is
+a story of the out-of-doors in this great unfenced land where a man
+must be a man.  I suppose, too, he enjoyed writing this work so
+much, partly, because it comes so easy for him to just tell a story
+without the intervention of some nerve racking problem.  The only
+book he has heretofore written that is purely a story is "The
+Shepherd of the Hills," and I sometimes wonder to what proportion
+of his readers does this Ozark story hold first place.  For all
+such, I am sure, "When a Man's a Man" will find a reception of
+special heartiness because it is just a fine, big, wholesome novel
+of simple sweetness and virile strength.
+
+I have written this sketch of Harold Bell Wright that you may know
+him as intimately, if possible, as if you had met him in person.
+But should you have the opportunity of making his acquaintance do
+not deny yourself the pleasure.  If you are a lover of his books I
+am sure you are just the kind of person that the author himself
+delights to meet.
+
+"Relay Heights," February 15, 1916.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, by H. B. Wright
+
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