Classic Audiobook Collection - The Re-creation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

The Re-creation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright audiobook. Genre: drama Brian Kent is a respectable young bank clerk on the outside, but inside he is fraying under pressure, temptation, and a marriage that drains his courage. When a desperate choice leaves him on the run and sick with remorse, Brian tries to vanish into the dark current of a dangerous river, hoping the water will erase what he has done. Instead, the river delivers him into the rough, beautiful Ozarks and into the care of two unlikely guardians: Judy, a sharp-eyed local girl with her own scars, and Auntie Sue, an aging schoolteacher whose plainspoken kindness hides a fierce moral strength. As Brian hides from the law and from his own self-contempt, he is put to work, drawn into a small community, and challenged to rebuild his body, his conscience, and his sense of purpose. But renewal is not simple. Old habits and old lies do not stay buried, and as affection grows between Brian and the spirited Betty Jo, jealousy and suspicion stir. With his past closing in and the river ever present as both threat and symbol, Brian must decide what it truly means to be re-created. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:15:27) Chapter 02 (00:31:38) Chapter 03 (00:53:36) Chapter 04 (00:58:31) Chapter 05 (01:19:57) Chapter 06 (01:33:54) Chapter 07 (01:51:24) Chapter 08 (02:10:22) Chapter 09 (02:31:25) Chapter 10 (02:50:04) Chapter 11 (03:15:08) Chapter 12 (03:24:14) Chapter 13 (03:47:10) Chapter 14 (04:14:59) Chapter 15 (04:34:40) Chapter 16 (04:54:15) Chapter 17 (05:08:33) Chapter 18 (05:19:39) Chapter 19 (05:37:12) Chapter 20 (05:54:24) Chapter 21 (06:18:13) Chapter 22 (06:35:02) Chapter 23 (07:03:10) Chapter 24 (07:11:02) Chapter 25 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright, read by Warren Cotty. Chapter 1 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, where I had wandered by chance one day into the elbow rock, Two 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 built 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-made 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 pretences of superiority and their superficial claims to distinction, I do not mean that. I mean that true royalty, which needs no cast 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 art, 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 so, Something made me know that, in the moments respite from her task, the woman was looking even beyond the sky itself. Her profile, clean, chiseled, 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 over much too 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 backwood 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 Liege Potter, voicing the unanimous opinion of the countryside, is a doggone funny thing and plumb unnatural, considering 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, It sure is a dead-burned shame and a plumb disgrace to the men of this here country, when you come to look at the sort of women, most of the Merrian, 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 80 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 horse, and Bess, a mild-mannered brindle cow, completed the modest establishment. About 30 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 superiors, but provision of Tom Warden was $15 an acre. But Auntie Sue always laughingly insisted that she really paid 50 cents an acre for the land and $14.5 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 when 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 and the clearing on the mountain side above, returning in the late afternoon, when her days 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 mountainside, But in her little home beside the river, she continued her work, not from textbooks. 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 skyline 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. End of chapter one. Chapter 2 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 2. 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 boardwalk 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,

We're 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 somber 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, dinky-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 whiskey 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 whiskey 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, 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 feet, 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 somber 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 whiskey bottle in the glass on the bureau, he quickly poured and drank again.

Notting 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 suitcase with various articles of clothing from the bureau drawers and the closet. He was in the act of closing the suitcase 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 whiskey. I guess you are the only baggage I'll need where I'm going, he said whimsically, and, leaving the open suitcase 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 somber 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 nearby 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's later, he had placed his bottle of whiskey, 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. Grooping in the darkness, the man found his bottle of whiskey, and working the cork out with his pocket knife, 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. End of Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3. A Missing Letter Ante Su's Little Log House by the River was placed some 500 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 riverbank, 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 upstream 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 shoreline, 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, 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 to 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 faraway sea.

skilled rivermen by holding their jaunt 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 water, the hush, from beyond the bottom lands on the other side of the stream came the long-drawn woo-wee, woo-ee, 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. 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 flash-like, 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 shoreline was lost in the dusk of the coming night. And even as the river gave back the light of the sky in 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 someone 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, What? A quick little smile deepened the crow's 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 20 the year she went to live with Auntie Sue. Looking obliquely at the old gentlewoman with a curious expression of mingled defiant,

suspense, suspicion, and affection on her almost vicious face, Judy drawled. Was you all a yelling 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 needing much help, seeing as how you are always a watch in it, a body'd think you all was mighty nigh old enough by now to look at it alone. Auntie Sue laughed, a low musical chuckling laugh, and, with a hint of loving and

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 someone 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 to, 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 it could be erie bigger. Ain't every reason as I can see why it should be every bigger if I could. Lord knows there's enough of it tis is.

Rough enough, too, as you all sure know if you all had to traips over them their hills all your life like I've had to. But isn't it wonderful tonight, Judy? It seems to me I've never seen it so perfect. It's just like it's all has been so far as I can see, "'sapping that the river's higher in the spring and more muddier,' "'returned to the mountain girl. "'I was born over there on yon side that there flat-topped mountain,

"'nigh the mouth of Red Creek. "'I growed up on the river, mostly, "'learned to swim and paddle in Johnboat, for I can remember. "'Red Creek, it heads over there, "'behind that their long ridge and engine, 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'am! See how black the old river is where she smashes into her elbow rock,

and how white them waves be, where the water biles and throws itself. It sure gets you if you was to get catched in there with your john boat, wouldn't it? Listen, ma'am, you can hear it o'erring like it 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 and vicious protest. If there is a god like you all are always talking about, and if he sure enough made them things like you all sees them, he sure ain't toaded 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 urine is so all-fired good, what did he go and let my pap get drunk for and beat me like he done when I was a baby? And make me grow up all crooked like what I be. Good hell, a dead-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 tonight. I think I shall wait for it. You all best sat down then, said Judy, speaking again in her querulous, stralling 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.

It'll be turning cold directly now that the sun. son's plum down, she said, and you all mustn't get to chillin' know-how. 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 a while, 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 to do such as that to me.

I'll sit a while with you, but I ain't needing 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 starlight 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 the first to break the silence.

I took notice neighbor Tom brung you all a right smart bunch of letter mail this evening, she said curiously. There was a troubled note in Auntie Sue's gentle voice as she reached. returned. The letter from the bank did not come, Judy. It 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 oughtn't to send it just in their letter that away. It sure looked like a heap of money to be entrusting them their ornery post-office fellers with.

Even if it was funny, newfangled money like that there was. By ma'am, you take old Todd Stimson down at the ferry. Now, that old devil's still anything that weren't too much trouble for him to 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. It sure looks like it ought to be safer enough, so long as it weren't mailed at the ferry where old Stimson could get his hands on it, agreed Judy.

Then, after a silence of several minutes, she added, in a more reassuring voice, I reckon us how it'll be all right, ma'am. I wouldn't worry myself if I was you. That their bank place, like as not, gets a right smart lot of letters, and it stands to reason the feller just naturally can't write back to everybody at once. Of course, agreed Auntie Sue. It is just some delay in their acknowledgement, 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 re-mailed 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 20, could not see that which was so clear to the eyes of 70. 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. It sure is a fine night to go possum hunting, 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 will 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 them? The Billings is. Across from the clubhouse will be out too, I reckon. When it's moonlight, they're always a hunting possum and coon. When it's dark, they're out on the river a gigging for fish. Well, I reckon I'll be going in now, ma'am.

She concluded, with a yawn. ain't no usein' a body staying up when there ain't nothing to do but to sleep as I can see with an awkward return to Auntie Sue's good night and sweet dreams dear the mountain girl went into the house

for an hour longer the old gentle woman 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.

End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Recreation of Brian Kent By Harold Bell Wright This Librevox recording is in the public domain Chapter 4 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 anyone 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 careen, 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 pool 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 cross-current 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 Yeti 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 mainstream, 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. End of Chapter 4.

Chapter 5 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. 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 a 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

meeting. 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 appears. apparently overruled her fear, and, throwing herself flat on the ground, she wormed her way back

to the brink of the riverbank. Cautiously, without making a sound, she peered through the tall grass and weeds that fringed the rim above the Yeti. 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 plowed 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, or at broke in fragments, and at this, the figure moved slightly. It's alive, all right, commented Judy to herself with a grin of satisfaction at the result of her investigation. But it's sure time he was a-getting 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 whiskey bottle. At the sight of the bottle, the mountain girl rose to her. She saw, too, that, in one hand, the man clutched The mountain girl rose to her feet with an understanding laugh. "'Hale!' she said aloud. "'Drunk! That's all dead drunk. I'll sure fetch him out of it!' 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 loud 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'm so much alive that it makes any material difference. He lifted the whiskey bottle and studied it thoughtfully. You all come dead burns near not being every bit alive, returned the girl. Yes, said the man, inquiringly. Yep, you sure did come mighty nigh it. If your old John Boat had carried you all on down to her elbow rock, instead of being catched in the eddy here,

you all would sure enough 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. "'And there sure ain't no chance for you all to get any liquor here.' Where'd you all come from, anyhow? How'd you all get here without no oars nor paddle nor nothing? Where's you all aiming to 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 educated. Antie 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.

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 sullenly disheveled 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 dead burned if you all ain't a thing to 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 to being abusive. She retorted in her shrill, drawling, monotone. But I can tell you all one thing, mister. It was God Almighty himself, and my drunken pap what made me to look like I do. Well, 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 main. 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 have drowned and sure, if I had, she retorted, somewhat malified 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 meaning to say that you all was a wanton to drown? Something like that, he returned.

And then, with a hint of ugliness in his voice and eyes, he wrote. grasp. 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 is how you all can get any liquor 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 stopped, 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 their John boat what done commonsure last night down there in the eddy.

Judy explained to Auntie Sue. To the man, she said, This here's Auntie Sue, mister, but I don't reckon as how she's got any liquor for you. Liquor, questioned Auntie Sue. What in the world do you mean, child? Then, quickly to the stranger, My dear man, you are ringing 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-concerned. 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'm 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'm not myself. You might not be safe with me. Ask her. She knows. He turned to Judy. He's done, said it, ma'am, said Judy, in answer to Auntie Sue's questioning look, my pap, he was that way when he done smashed me up again the wall when I was nothing but a baby, and it made me grow up all crooked and 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's 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. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6. 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 straight 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 rule. of the game, and never did the man, even in his most terrible moments, failed 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, 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 is 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, leave 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, to anyone. When the Mountain Girl protested, saying,

You all ain't got no call to be wearing yourself ter the bone, taking care 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 trifling an ornery in no account. That's what he is, or he sure wouldn't have been afloating round in that there, old John. boat without any gun or fishing lines or hat even, or say nothing of that there are whiskey bottle being plum-empty.

Auntie Sue made no reply to the mountain girls 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, an 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, Aunt 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 was thinking, Judy, how he, how he might have been my son. Your son! ejaculated the girl. Why, ma'am, you all are. ain't never even been married, as I've ever heard 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 cover lid.

"'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 a feeling for words. I have been in hell, and you, you have brought me out. Why did you do it?

Because you were 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 Eddie 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 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 it 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 and 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

in clouds and day breaks 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 71 years old on the 18th day of next November, and you must call me Auntie Sue, just as everyone else does. Wakefield, Wakefield,

where have I seen that name? He wrinkled his brow in an effort to remember. Wakefield, I feel sure I've heard it somewhere. "'It's 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. Lies 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.

End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of The Recreation of the Recreation. of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. 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.

It's the sheriff, ma'am, whispered Judy. I was just a comment. to tell you, I see them from the kitchen winder. He's got two other men with him. Their hosses is tied to the fence in front. What the hell we do now? There after him in there, sure's death. Auntie Sue's face was white, and her lips trembled, but only for a moment. Go back to the kitchen, Judy, and stay there, she commanded, in a whisper, and went to open the front of the 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 teaching 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 $14.5. For the sunsets.

You'll have to be blamed, careful not to trespass in the sunsets in this neighborhood, Ross. Again, his hearty laugh roared out, while his chair threatened to collapse with a quaking of his massive body. The gentleman seated at the window laughed quietly in sympathy. You'll be all right, Bill Ross, the sheriff continued. As long as you're with me, Auntie Sue and me have been friends for about 20 years now. I always stopped to see her whenever I'm passing through the Elbeau 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 plump forgot, Auntie Sue. This gentleman is Mr. Ross. He's 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. 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 childlike 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. 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. Rock.

us here works most of his time on these bank cases. Just now he's 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 night shirts. 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 want to do I?

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. Uh... 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 40 miles up the river from here. He disappeared from the hotel one night, leaving his suitcase, 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, seems.

But I'm 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 Johnboat 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 a 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's 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 passing 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'm 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 anyone, any stranger, I mean, has called at the house lately, or if you've seen anyone 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 Wardens.

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 anyone to escape you, Mr. Ross. I have read such wonderful things about Mr. Burns in the work of his organization. And now that I have met you, a real-life 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 sense. hand in farewell, returned. I counted 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'm 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. 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 really is a fine-looking chap, the detective answered. Thirty years old, fully six feet tall, rather slender, but well-built, weighs about 150, a splendid head, smooth, shaven, reddish hair, dark blue eyes and a high broad forehead. He is of Irish extraction. His 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 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. He gave us a pretty full account of this fellow Kent's case. You will notice there's 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 goodbye 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 plumsar, 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 today, though. Goodbye. 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. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public. domain. Chapter 8. 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. Y'all have sure fixed it this here time, ain't you? Can't y'all see what a hell of a hole you've done got us into her? When Auntie Sue apparently could not reply, Judy continued.

Just as if it wasn't more and enough for you all to go on wearing yourself plum out, taking care of that there ornery no account, feller. what I never ought to drag out of the river no-how. And now y'all got to go and just naturally lie like you just did to the sheriff and that there detectative man. I was plump scared to death of listening to you through the crack in the kitchen door. I allowed every minute they'd catch you shore.

My lord almighty, ma'am, can't you all figure what'll happen to us if they ever find out that we's done had him, hid right here in this here house all the time. I never heard tell of such Dadburned, fools' doings in all my born days. I sure wish to God that their old John boat had to tuck him off down the river and smashed him up again elbow rock, like it art to, and not the fetched him to our door to get us in jail for saving 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. Y'all ain't needin to do it, but once, neither. Once, it's sure a heap of plenty for that there big sheriff man. Just look what he did to my pap. He's jailed Pap seven times that I can recollect. God Almighty knows how many times he'd catched him before I was born. and Pap, he didn't do so mighty much every 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. And just look at all the money y'all done lost. Money? questioned Auntie Sue. Yep, money. That their reward what they did to pay to you all if you hadn't lied like you did. I reckon as how there'd have been as much. Maybe as what was in that there letter you all done sent to the bank, and ain't never heard tell of since. It's most likely clean gone by now, and here you done gone and throwed this other away. Plum throwed it away. At this, Auntie Sue's spirit suddenly flashed into fiery indigree, indigree,

"'Judus 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 anti-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 anyone, not a soul know that Mr. Burns is in the house, or that we ever saw him.

That there detectative man said is how the fellow's name was Brian Kent, didn't he? 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'am, I sure ain't aiming to forget that, replied the humble 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 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 70 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. 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 falsehoods. 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 lifelong 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's what the detective told you about me, is true. Yes, she answered, smiling. I was a clerk at 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 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.

"'Someday, 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 school teacher. 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. Tomorrow, 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 dealings, was the theft of a small sum of money in banknotes, 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 acknowledgement 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 Tremon, 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 ensured 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 nearby 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,

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 a 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. End of Chapter 8.

Chapter 9 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9. Anti-Soo'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 Yeti So short a time before And no one Exempting perhaps detect of 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 expose,

and flight, and his known mental and physical condition at the time he disappeared from the hotel in the Little Rivertown 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 you. You made a great impression upon you. 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've known him. Needless to say, I endorsed 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 accidental tumble in the river.

She finished with her low chuckling laugh. And someday, 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 in 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 a time when I 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. 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 on going. It never stops to turn back. No matter what happens to it, it never happens to it, it never stops. It goes on and on and on, until 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, 70 years makes one sure of some things. He 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 one, 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 that 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, kindle of. 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's speak. Oh, it is so good to have someone to share it with, someone 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 life work 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 know exactly, he returned. But, of course, I must go somewhere out into the world again. And why must you go somewhere out in 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. 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 it 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 doubt. 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. Someday, 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 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 schoolteacher 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'm 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. But 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 schoolteacher, 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 30 acres of my little farm is under cultivation, the remaining few, 50 acres is wild timberland. If I could have that 50 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 choose to stay for a while, 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 a while 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 tomorrow. 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. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of the recreation of of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10, 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 mountainside. 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 stair-like up the face of the steep bluff,

zigzags down the easier slope of the doth, down riverside 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 Orden'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 shortcut for anyone following the river road on foot. Brian, seated on the riverbank 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, returned 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 unimportance 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 pool 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 Elbeau 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 Anteuse's philosophy and faith, a strength that would, if he could make it his, ensure 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 over him. Judy was climbing the steep trail. Curiously, Brian watched the deformed mountain girl as she made her way up the narrow stair-like path, and her cutting words came back to him. God Almighty, and my drunken pap made me like I am, but you, damn you, 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.

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 someone. 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! Hoie! Mr. Burns! Brian's lips were parted to answer the call when something happened on top of 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 girls start and turned 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 girls 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 ever was 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 something awful when you all put in, returned the poor girl, trembling with fear. I know, cause he's done hit me heaps or times before. He's my pap. "'Your father!' exclaimed Brian. Judy nodded, then screamed,

"'Look out, he'll get you sure!' Judy's rescueer world, 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, and you all are sure going to find that you can't come between a man as a lawful child in these here mountains, mister, if you all be from the city. And you will find that you can't. can't strike a crippled girl in my presence, even if she is your daughter, in these mountains or anywhere else, retorted Brian. What are you trying to do with her anyway? I aim to 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? It 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 brush, cousin, he doesn't come to the house to get me, said the girl fearfully. But why does he fear to come to the house? persisted, Brian.

Has he done give me to Auntie Sue? Gave you to Auntie Sue? Repeated the puzzled Brian. Jap Taylor interrupted with, I didn't sign any paper and shut up you, snapped Brian. Go on, Judy. It was a year last corn planting, explained the girl. My ma, she died.

He used to whip her too. And Auntie Sue was there helping, Williams, and Tom Ordon and some of the other folks, they was there, too, and they done fixed it, so that I was to go and live with Auntie Sue, and Pap, he gave me to her. He sure did, Mr. Burns, and I ain't a-wanting to go with him no more. The poor girl's shrill monotone broke, and her twisted body shook with sobs. I didn't sign any. paper, repeated Judy's father, with sullen stubbornness.

And once more, I sure ain't going to. I lous as how she'll just go home and work for me like she art, instead of living with that there old-made school, ma'am. I'm her pa I am, and I reckon I got rights. He started toward the girl, who drew closer to Brian, and begged piteously, Don't let him take me. For 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 get you all for this. Jab Taylor ain't a letting no man come between him and his'n. I'll fix you, and I'll fix that there schoolma'am, too. She's nothing 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 mountainside, 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 aiming to tell nobody, said Judy between sobs.

I sure ain't wanting to make no trouble, not for any Sue know-how. She's been powerful good to 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 monitoring, monotone. Did you all mind what my pap allowed he do to Auntie Sue, Mr. Burns? Yes, Judy, but don't worry, child. He's not going to harm anyone while I am around. Y'all are aiming to stay then, be ya? 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 aiming to go away. "'Kinued Judy. "'It was that I was a-hunting y'all to tell you about when Pap he'd catched me.' "'What were you going to tell me, Judy?' "'I allowed to tell you all about Auntie Sue. "'She'd be powerful mad if she'd knowed I'd said anything to you. "'But she's needing somebody like you to help her. "'Mighty bad.

"'She's done lost a heap of money lately. "'It was some she sent—' "'Bryon interrupted. Wait a minute, Judy, you must not tell me anything about Auntie Sue's private affairs. You must not tell anyone. 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 about right, and I won't tell nobody nothing. But tain't a-goin' to hurt none to say is how you all ought to stay, I reckon. And why do you think I ought to stay? day, Judy. Cause of what Auntie Sue's done for y'all, nursing you when you was plum crazy and plum dangerous from liquor, and a lion like she did to her the sheriff, and that they're detectative man, returned Judy stoutly.

And cause she's so oldin, is a-needing you all to help her, and cause she's loving you all like she does, and is a wanting you all to stay so bad, it's mighty nigh of making her plum 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. It looks to me like somebody just naturally's got to take care of Auntie Sue, Mr. Burns. all her life she's been taken care of everybody just like she took

me and just like she took you all sides a heap of other ways and now she's so old and mighty nigh plumb wore out it sure looks like it was time somebody was a vixen to do something for her that was what I was a-hunting y'all to tell you when pap catched me, Mr. Burns.

I'm glad you told me, Judy, very glad. You see, I I was not thinking of things in just that way. I, loud, 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 all just naturally got to stay and take care of her now,

after what Papp'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 sandbars 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. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11. Recreation

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 Suez that morning, was now succeeding. 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 mountainside 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 axe 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 schoolteacher with wholehearted pleasure, and quoted his jests in 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 interchange 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 flocked together are not of necessity material birds of material feathers. Nor was Brian Kent himself unconscious of his recreation. 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, 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 axe to the day's

clean labor, was a draft 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 skyline, 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 a 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 skillful question and subtle argument, she stimulated his mind and fancy, to lay hold of the truce 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 I'm. doctor. 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 tonight I just can't keep it to myself any longer. Why don't you give to the world some of the thoughts you've been wasting on Judy and me? It sure been a wasting of them on me, agreed said Judy. For God, I don't sense what he's talking about more than half the time. Brian laughed. Judy is prophetic, Auntie Sue. She voices perfectly the sentiment of the world toward any book I might write. Antie Sue detected a note of bitterness

underlying the laughing comments 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 Ewan's talk that be mighty fine if a body only had the learning to sense them. And there must be heaps of folks where Ewan's come from. What would know Mr. Burns's meaning if he was to write it all out plain? Everybody ain't like me. It sure's a God's blessing they ain't, too. And there, Brian Deere, 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 said, 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've 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've been talking about, writing, answered Brian. Oh, she cried with quick, and delighted triumph. Then I am right. You've 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's 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're, 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 wrongdoing that makes people turn bad, he continued. It is having their real selves misunderstood and doubted and smothered, and their realist loves and dreams and aspirational.

never recognized, or else distorted and twisted and made to appear as something they hate. I want to make 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 Zhu, then I want to tell them about you and your river. I would teach them to things you have taught me. I would say to everyone 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 watergrass, or the great rocks and cliffs that make the roaring whirlpools and rapids. Do they stay the water, the water, water, 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 on 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. Antisou, 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, altogether are the river, and they altogether 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 a 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, than you, 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.

After 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 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,

and 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 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 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. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 12. Auntie Sue takes a chance. So, Brian wrote his book that winter. When the days were fair, he worked with his axe on the mountainside, 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, and 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 lamplight on her silvery hair, and her sewing basket within reach of her hand, engaged with some bits 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 wind 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 center, 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 death-like 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 the story's meaning, and marveled 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 printer? 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 Joe. 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 had.

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 Joe. Betty Joe is? Auntie Sue paused and laughed with a suggestion of embarrassed confusion. Betty Joe is just Betty Joe, Brian, she finished.

Brian laughed now. Fine, Auntie Sue. That describes her exactly. Tells me her life story and gives me a detailed account of her family, ancestors and all. It describes her with more accuracy than you'd think, retorted Auntie Sue, smiling in return at his teasing manner. I reckon is how she's got more of her name than that, ain't she? Said Judy, who was a silent but intensely interested listener.

I've always took notice that folks with funny names will stand a right smart of watching. 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 Joe. You shouldn't say such things, child. Might as well say em as to think em, I reckon. Judy returned, her beady black eyes stealthily watching Brian.

What is your Betty Joe's real name, Auntie Sue? asked Brian curiously. Again, Auntie Sue seemed to have. 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 traveled abroad for a few months, she decided all at once that she wanted a course in a business college, which was just what anyone 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. Ain't no name for a common gal to have. It sure ain't. There's something deadburned queer about it somewhere. Nonsense, Judy, said Brian in a low voice. Don't worry Auntie Sue. "'I ain't aiming to worry her none,' returned the mountain girl. "'But I'll bet you all are pretty that this here gal will worry both eun's for you are through with her. "'Me too, I reckon.' "'For some reason, Auntie Sue's letter to Betty Joe seemed to be rather long. "'In fact, she spent the entire evening at it, which led Judy to remark that,

"'It sure looked like Auntie Sue was aiming to write a book or something. 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 Joe 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. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 13. 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 plowed 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 at 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 Ryan 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 illusion 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 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 America,

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 loved son. But it is all right, Brian Deere, she said with brave cheerfulness. When one has watched the sunsets for seventy years, one ceases to fear that. 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 and Buenos Aires, and which she was sending to the bank for deposit to her little account. It had been a very unbusiness-like letter and a very unbusiness-like 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 passed, and which was so fully represented by his work. Again the river, swinging around in 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 who 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 to her Auntie Sue? Was there something in that there letter but Jackson give y'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 riverbank 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 you?

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 to tell you all once. That time Pap catched me.

and you all loud is how I oughtn't to tell nothing about Auntie Sue to nobody. But it is different now, Judy, returned Brian. Something has happened that makes it necessary for me to know. Meaning that their letter about her brother being dead? asked Judy shrewdly. Yes. What you all got to know for? Because...

Brian could not finish. Judy's beady eyes were watching him intently now. It sure looks like you all ain't needn't needn't to tell you all anything, she said dryly. Then Auntie Sue did send money. She sure did. I seed her fix it in her letter myself, came the answer. What kind of money? I don't know.

Some funny kind it was. What her brother done sent her from some funny. place. I don't know just where. When did she send it? About a month for you come. Anne, 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 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, winter.

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, Noon? She ain't no.

fool, and I done heard that there's sheriff and the detectives of man, telling her about you in the bank. And the sheriff, he done give her paper what he said told all about what you all done, and she must have burned the paper or done something with it, because I could never find it after that night. And what would she do that for? And what for did she make me promise, not to ever say nothing to you all about? And, and what for did she make me promise, not to ever say nothing to you all about that there money letter. And why ain't she said nothing to you about that letter from the bank not a-comin? If she didn't know it was you, instead of them, what done got the money?

The girl paused for a moment, and then went on in a tone of reverent wonder. And to think that all the time she could have turned you all over to that, dear sheriff, and got the money reward to pay her back, you all done took. 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 for sending his tormented soul to seek relief in the message which, during the happy months just passed 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 to be like this. You all ain't plumb bad. I knows you ain't. Account of the way you all have been to me,

and cause you kept Pap from hurting me, and cause you are taking care of Annie Sue like you're doing. It ain't no matter about the money now, because you all can take care of her always. Brian looked up from the manuscript in his hand and stared dumbly at the girl, as if he failed to hear her clearly. And just think about your book, Judy continued pleadingly. Think about all them fine things you all have done wrote down for everybody to read.

About the river always a-going on just the same, no matter what happens, and about Auntie Sue, and 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. For God, you all oughtn't to look like that. The man threw up his head and laughed. Laughed as the wild reckless and lost Brian Kent had left, 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 recreated 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've wrote down for everybody to 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 life, laugh. For God, you doesn'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 berth on that mountain river, knew better than Brian what to do. A short distance below the point where she had plunged into the river, 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 route. 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 full chance as that? She broke away from him with, Well, what you all gone and do such a dead-burned-full thing for? It's you all what's crazy yourself.

Plum 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 it away once. Can't you earn no more, no how. Well, what's a you?

proposed to do with it, said the puzzled man in a gentler tone. I aims to give it to Auntie Sue, came the startling reply. I reckon she'll know what to do. It always 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-burn-tickled at getting it done. You all ain't got no right to sling it in the river, and anyway, I I ain't going to 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. End of Chapter 13. Chapter 14 of The Re Creation of Brian Kent

by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 14. Betty Joe Reconsiders. 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 business-like 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 disheveled 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-groom. 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 get it?

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 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 shortcut. 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 to know the minute I set eyes on you. You all are the gal with that no-account name, and you've come to work for him there, she pointed to Brian. I helping him to write his book, but ain't his and no more no how, cause he done throwed it away.

Thumb into the river. I am Miss Williams, returned the other. I, no account name, I suppose, is Betty Joe. She laughed kindly. Perhaps it won't seem so no accounts 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. And you knowed me cause I'm so all crooked and ugly, I reckon, came the uncompromising return. Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe 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'n't a-go-in-in-to-a-s, sling it into the river again. The words were half-questioned 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 way toward Betty Joe, and whispered, You all best tell her about it. I sure hate her poison bed, but it's easy to see she'd sure know what to 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 passed 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 Suze. 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 could never 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 badly damaged, Mr. Burns? He had forgotten Betty Joe, 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 Joe 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 nearby, 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 draw a manuscript that had been thrown into river and rescued just in the nick of time. That was Betty Joe's way. She always did everything without hesitation,

just as though she had spent the 23 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 bathe 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 now. author before, I suspect I have a lot to learn. She looked up at him with a Betty Joe's smile that went straight to his heart, as Betty Joe'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 Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe,

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 Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe said.

But I don't see how I can tell you, Miss Williams. Why? laughed Betty Joe. 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 Joe had directed. But this is not a business matter, Miss Williams. He managed to protest half-heartedly. Betty Joe 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 Joe slipped her watch back into her pocket and continued. You will have plenty of it. of time before that man with my trunk and things can get away around over schoolhouse hill and down again to Auntie Suze. 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 Joe, 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 Suze, and that she had just finished a course in a business college in Cincinnati. At several points in his story, Betty Joe asked straightforward questions or made short, matter-of-fact comments, but always with her business-like 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 Joe to come to help Brian with his book. But Auntie Sue had taken no chance on Betty Joe herself. Perhaps it was, in fact, the dear old teacher's certainty about Betty Jo herself that 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 Joe 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 don't think I see what you mean. Brian replied, 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 someone

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 Joe'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 instinct of

certainty that Betty Joe knew exactly how he felt and exactly what she was doing. While he was thinking these things, or rather feeling them, Betty Joe 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, uh, 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'm sure.

For a moment, there was a suspicious moisture in Betty Joe'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 Joe 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 Joe 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 make Auntie Sue happy. 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 could never

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 Joe 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, 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 Joe 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 the money 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 assent, it will do Auntie Sue a world more good than you're 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 arise with my things. She went for the manuscript as she spoke. See? she cried.

It is quite dry, and not a bit of worse for its temperamental experience. She laughed gleefully. But Miss Williams, exclaimed Brian, 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 a while 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 arrived at that 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 Joe 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 Joe had the dear old lady in her arms. End of Chapter 14.

Chapter 15 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 15, A Matter of Business. The weeks that followed the coming of Betty Joe to the Little Loghouse by the river passed quickly for Brian Kent. Perhaps it was the peculiar circle. 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 Joe 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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 something to do with it. The morning after her arrival, Betty Joe set to work typing the manuscript. Brian went to his work on the timbered hillside. In the evenings, Brian worked over the typewritten pages, revising, correcting, perfecting, and then, as Betty Joe 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 newborn 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 Joe 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 axe. And it followed, naturally, that as the end of the day drew near, the two would go together down the mountainside 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 24.

As for Betty Joe, well, it was really Betty Joe who established the custom and developed it to the point where it was of such importance. Auntie Sue was too experienced from her lifelong study of boys and girls not to observe the deepening of the friendship between the man and the woman whom she had brought to 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 mountainside 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 faraway 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 Joe at the time of their first meeting. On the day that Betty Joe 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 axe 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 axe with such easy strength. In truth, Brian Kent, at his woodsman's labor, made a picture not at all unattractive. Swiftly, the cut in the tree trunk widened, as the axe bit deeply at every skillful 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 a 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 Joe was conscious of the man, who worked with such a vigor at his manly task. Slowly, accurately, the bright axe sank deeper and deeper into the heart of the tree. The chips increased in scattered profusion, and then, as Betty Joe watched, the swinging axe cut through the last fiber of the tree's strength,

and the leafy top swayed gently toward its fall. Almost imperceptibly, at first, it moved, while Betty Joe watched. breathlessly. Brian swung his axe 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 axe 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 Joe 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 today,' 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 axe 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 mine so much, do you? No, I don't suppose the tree mine 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 Joe confessed with characteristic frankness, and I am sure it must be a very good thing for the world that everyone 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 Joe 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 Joe's exclamation was one of surprise. Then she said, in her most matter-of-fact business-like tone, thank you. I will render a statement of my account, but, for once Betty Joe 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 Joe interrupted. I understand.

It is all we can do. Forgive me. Brian Kent did not know that Betty Joe a few minutes later, 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 Joe, 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 you're 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 Joe's ticket and checking her trunk. With brave commonplaces they said goodbye 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 his 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 recreation. 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 Joe'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 tumults of dangerous rapids, wherein he would be forced to fight for his very existence. Would Betty Joe 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 Joe'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 in silence. while his companion, with the wisdom of her 70 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. End of Chapter 15.

Chapter 16 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 16. 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 nearby 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 gentle 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. 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 going to think of me, but I'm bound to tell you just the same.

Seems like I got her. even if you all was to lick me for it like Pap Eustor. By 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-want-a-want-sut-down. I ain't been asleep.

It seems like I can 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 allow she'll get back? The wandering Brian did not at first catch her meaning, and she continued with an impatient jerk of her head. It's that there gal with the no-account name, Betty Joe I'm a-talking about.

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? Because I'm telling you all not to 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 doesn't let her come back here,

know how, because if you do, I'll hurt her, sure. You all been thinking as how I was plumb blind, I reckon. But I've seen you every evening when she'd pretend her just go for a walk, and then make straight for the clearing where you was a-chopping, and then you'd quit and set with her up there on the hill. Youen's never knowed I was a-watching from the brush all the time, did you? Well, I was, and when Ewan's had walked down to her the house, so slow and close together, I'd sneak ahead and beat you home, but all the time I was a-seeing you, and Ewens never knowed, because Ewens just naturally couldn't see nor hear nothing but each other. Don't you all allow as how I'd know by the way you looked at her, while Ewens was affixing that

their book. Every night, what you always had thinking about her. My God Almighty, it was just as plain to me as if you was saying it right out loud all the time. A heap plainer it was than if you'd done rid it down in your book. I can't make out to read print much know-how like you in skin, but I sure can see what I see. I—' Judy, Judy! Brian broke the stream of the excited girls' talk. What in the world are you saying? What do you mean, child? You all knows Dad burned well what I'm a-meaning, she retorted with increasing anger. I'm a-meaning that you all are plumb-loving that there, Betty Joe gal.

That's what I'm a-meaning, and you all sure ain't got every right for her to go and do such a thing, no-how. 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'-to-sa'-y-say if you all kills me. I've just naturally got her. Seems like I was all afire inside and would plum burn up if I didn't. I've got rights, I reckon, if I be all crooked and twisted and out of shape and ugly-faced and no learning or nothing. A dry sob choked the torrent of words for an instant, but, with a savage effort, she went on.

I know I ain't nothing alongside of her, but you all ain't going to have her just the same, not if I have to kill her first. You ain't got no right to have her, no how, because it's like it's not. You all done got a woman already somewhere, wherever twas you all come from. and even if you ain't got no woman already, I sure ain't going to let you have her. What'd she ever do for you? It was me what dragged you all from the river when you was mighty nigh dead from liquor, and too plumb sick to save yourself. It's me that's kept from telling the sheriff who you be,

and to take in that their reward money. It was me what jumped into the river above elbow rock, just to get your dad burned old book. When you'd done, throwed it plum away. I knowed first time I heard Annie Sue name her what she'd do to you. Any fool would have known what a woman with a half-gal, half-boy name like Heron would do, and she's done it. She sure has, but she ain't a-going to do it no more. You all belongs to me a heap more and you do her, if it comes to that, though.

I ain't a fool of myself, none of thinking that such as you could ever take up with such as me, me being what I am. No, sir, I ain't never fooled myself every bit like that, Mr. Burns. But it ain't a making no difference how ugly and crooked in no account I be outside. The inside of me is a loving you like she never could, nor anybody else, I reckon. And I'll just go on a loving you, no matter what happens. and I ain't a caring whether you got a woman already or not, or whether you all robbed or killed or whatever you done.

And so I'm a-telling you, you'd best not let her come back here no more. Because I just naturally can't stand it to see you-ins together. For God, I'm a-telling 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-Joe lady would do, if I was to get her catched in them there rampants? What do you all reckon the elbow rock water

would do to her? I'll tell you what it'd do. It would smash and grind and tear and hammer that fine straight body of hers till it was all broken and twisted and crooked a heap worse than what I be. That's what it'd do. and it would scratch and cut up and beat up that pretty face and mess up her pretty hair and choke her and smother her till she was all blue-black and muddy. And her eyes was red and a-stairing, and she was nothing but an ugly lump of dirt. And it wouldn't even leave her. Her fine clothes neither. The elbow rock water wouldn't. It'd just naturally tear them off her and leave her without anything what's making you love her like you're a-doing. and where would all her fine schooling and smart talk and pretty ways be then, eh?

She wouldn't be no better, nor half as good as me, I'm telling you, once 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. for God I ain't a wanting to do it, but it seems like I can't help myself. I can't sleep for wanting to fix it so.

So you just couldn't want to have her no more than you're a wanting me. I sure ain't a fool of myself, none. Not every bit of thinking you ought ever get to liking such as me, but I can't help sort of dreaming about it and pretending. And all the while I'm not. a-knowin' inside her me like that there ain't nobody not any sue nor this here betty joe nor that there other woman nor anybody what can care for you like i'm a caring that they just naturally couldn't care like me cause cause cause you see sir i ain't got nobody else ain't no man but you

ever been decent to 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 crowds at his feet. Then, very deep, very deep. He could, gently, he lifted her from the ground and tried as best as 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 she is. If I be like what I am, I'm plump sorry I had to do this, but I just naturally couldn't help it. You ain't got no call to be scared I'll do it 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. "'It is pretty, ain't it, Mr. Burns?' she said at last. "'With the hills all so soft and dreamy-like, and them clouds afloating way up there over the top of Table Mountain, with the moon making them all silvery and shiny round the edges, and them trees on yon side the river, looking like they was made of smoke or fog or something like it. And the old river itself lay in there in the bin like,

like a long strip of shining gold. It sure is pretty. Funny, I could never see it that away before, ain't it? Yes, Judy, it is beautiful tonight, he said. But Judy, apparently without hearing him, continued. Seems like I can sense a little. little tonight, what Auntie Sue and youans are always talking about the river, about its being like life and such as that. And it appears like I can kind of get a little, or what you done

wrote about it in your book, about the currents and the still places and the rough water and all. I reckon as how I'm 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. "'It sure appears to be that away. "'But I can tell you all something else about the river "'what you didn't put down in your book, Mr. Burns. "'There's heaps and heaps, there's snags and quicksands,

"'and sunk rocks and shallow places where it looks deep, "'and deep holes where it looks shaller, "'and currents what hid away down under, "'that'll catch you and drag you in when you ain't a-thinking, and drown you sure. Taint all of the river what Annie Sue and youans can see from the porch. You see, I knows about it, about them other things I mean, because I was born and grown up a-knowing about them.

And the next time you all write your book, Mr. Burns, I allow you all ought to put in about them their snags and things, because folks sure got to know about them. They ain't a-wanting to get 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 suppose 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 night? Brian retorted, bringing a chair for her. I am prowling because I couldn't see. 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 sidelently. 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 woman. And for a man to kill a woman's faith in women.

man. Brian Kent buried his face in his hands. Am I right, dear? asked the old gentle woman 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 70 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 besides myself ever knew, and they are both dead many years now. I'm 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 won 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, wondering, 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 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's was a lot of in the night with his thoughts, and the river swept steadily on its shining way through the moonlit world to the distant sea. End of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 17.

An awkward situation. Frequent letters from Betty Joe informed Brian and Auntie Sue of that practical and business-like young woman's negotiations with various Eastern publishers, until at last the matter was finally settled to Betty Joe'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 Joe 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 Suz'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 loathe to extend a helping 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 Joe's mission was completed, it seemed months ago that he had said goodbye to her and had watched the train disappear between the hills. But when at last, the long whistle, echoing and re-echoing from the timber to 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 in wheels and brakes, came to a stop at the depot platform, and there was Betty Joe

herself. It seemed that it was only yesterday that she had gone away. Very calm and self-possessed and well-poised was Betty Joe when she stepped from the train. to meet him. She was very capable and business-like, as she claimed her baggage, and saw it safely in the spring wagon. But still there was 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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 Joe,

but each time she went stealthily back to her own room. Betty Joe awoke early that morning. Outside her open window, the birds were singing, and the sun, which was just above the higher mountaintops, 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 city's stale and dingy atmosphere.

Betty Joe 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 a 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 winnie. Quietly, so as not to disturb Auntie Sue, Betty Joes slipped from the house and went down the gentle slope to the riverbank

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 disheveled. 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? Why did you all come back for? demanded Judy with sullen menace in every word. I done told him not to let you. It appears to me youans ought to have more sense. Alarmed at the girl's manner, Betty Joe thought to calm her by saying gently,

"'I, 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 come if Auntie Sue likes to have me? You all are a lion, returned Judy viciously. But you all can't fool me. You all came back because 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 know. "'Those, Dad burned well, that's what you came back for. "'But it ain't a-going to do you no good. "'It sure ain't. "'I done told him. "'I sure warned him what had happened "'if he let you come back.

"'I heard you all a-talking yesterday evening, "'all about his book, "'and what a great man that their publisher-feller back east louse he's going to be. "'And I can see now that you always noted from the start. and that's why you all have been fixing to get him away from me. I done studied it all out last night, but I sure ain't a-going to let you do it. As she finished, the Mountain Girl,

who had worked herself into a frenzy of rage, moved stealthily toward Betty Joe, 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 Joe 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 to be, because there ain't you, nothing can stop me now. Know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to pull. put you all in the river, just like I told them. It old elbow rock is going to make you all broken and twisted and ugly, like what my pap made me. Oh, it'll sure fix that their fine slim body of urine, and that there pretty face what he likes to look at, so, and them fine clothes will be all wet and must and torn off you. You all sure will be a-looking worse than what I ever look.

The next time he sees you, you with your no-count half-gall and half-boy name. As the mountain girl with the quickness of a wild thing leaped upon her, Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 riverbank, against which the swift waters of the rapids swept with terrific force. A moment more in Brian would have been too late. Throwing Judy aside, he caught the exhausted Betty Joe in his arms, and, carrying her a little back from the edge of the stream, placed her gently on the ground. Betty Joe 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 Joe'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 Joe 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 that there was any danger of this 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 Joe'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 will 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 a room, and the fire is not even made in the kitchen stove yet. End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 18. Betty Joe faces herself.

All that day, Auntie Sue wondered about Judy, while Brian and Betty Joe 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 that was a living at Auntie Suz. 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 lying. You all came back because he's 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 riverbank, 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 Joe should face herself squarely, with several definite and pointed and exceedingly personal questions. It was like Betty Joe to be honest with herself and to demand of herself that her problems be met squarely. First of all, Betty Joe, 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? You have not permitted yourself to love him, that means you would be in love with him if you dared, doesn't it? And Betty Joe, 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 Joe? And Betty Joe, 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 Joe protested quickly. You must remember that you are wholly ignorant of Brian in 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 Joe. Are you quite sure that you are not making the mistake that is most commonly made by young women?

Betty Joe 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 Joe's quite womanly prejudice is admitted because the prejudice was so womanly, and because Betty Joe herself was so womanly. Very well, Miss Betty Joe. 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 Joe 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 Joe did not at all regard him as a criminal. Betty Joe, as Auntie Sue, recognized only the recreated 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 Joe 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 Joe in the darkness of her room, could only be a woman, a woman to whom he was bound, not by love indeed. Betty Joe could not believe that, but by ties of honor and of the law. And very clearly Betty Joe reasoned, too, that Brian's his 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 this essential integrity

of his character, and compelled her admiration and confidence. That is exactly. 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 Joe 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 business. 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 the fiendness of their love, Betty Joe 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 this steady onward flow of the

hole, Betty Joe'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 Joe 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 Joe 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. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 19 Judy's Confession In spite of all their care, Brian and Betty Joe 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 had expected.

It must have been about that same hour of the night when Betty Jo, after reaching her, 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. It 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, cautioned Judy. Don't wake them up. I just naturally got to tell you all something, Auntie Sue, but I ain't a wanton Mr. Burr.

turns in that there Betty Joe woman to hear. I reckon I best come through the winder. Acting upon the word, she climbed carefully into the room. Shooty child, what? The mountain girl interrupted Auntie Sue's tremulous whisper with, I'll tell it to you, ma'am, in a little bit, if you'll just wait. I got to see if they're sure enough asleep and first, though. She stole silently from the room to return a few minutes later. They are plumb asleep, both of them, she said in a low tone, when she had cautiously closed the door. I down opened the doors to their rooms and listened, and shut them again, without any one of them moving even. I'll fix the window now, and then we can make a lag.

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 bewilder, her mildered amazement. With a nervous laugh, Judy fingered her torn dress and disheveled hair. I sure am a side, ain't I, ma'am? I don't it a-coming through the brush in the dark. But don't-don't look so kind or lost like. You all ain't got no call to be scared of me. Why, Judy, dear, I am 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 reckon I couldn't hate myself no worse than I'm a dole. it seems like I've been mighty nigh plum crazy, but I just naturally had to come back and tell y'all because y'all been so good to me. She placed a chair for Auntie Sue and added,

Y'all best make yourself comfortable, though, ma'am. I mighty nigh tuckered out myself. It's the right smart way from where Papsa living to hear, and 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'am, I will. That's what I was aiming to do when I made up to come back.

And she did, starting with her observation of Brian and Betty Joe, and her conviction of their love, She told of her interview with Brian the night she warned him not to let Betty Joe return and finished with the account of her attack on Betty Joe that morning. Auntie Sue listened with amazement and pity. Here, indeed, was a wayward and troubled life current. But Judy, exclaimed the gentle old teacher, you would not really have pushed Betty Joe 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 aiming to do. I'd killed her sure if Mr. Burns hadn't come just when he did. I can't rightly tell how it was, but it seemed like there was a something inside of me that was a making me do it. And I couldn't somehow help myself. And, and that ain't all, ma'am, I'd done worse than that.

She continued in a low, moaning will. Oh, my God Almighty, why didn't Mr. Burns sling me into the river and let me be smashed and drowned at Elbeau Rock while he had me, instead of letting me get away to do what I've gone and done. Auntie Sue's wonderful native strength enabled her to speak calmly. What is it you've 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.

It seemed like Mr. Burns catching me like he did, and me as seeing him with her in his arms, made me plumb crazy mad. Now, loud, I'd fix it, so he couldn't ever have her. know how. So I done told Pap about him being Brian Kent and what had robbed that there bank. How, there was a lot of reward money waiting 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 Joe! 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 anyone else besides your father? There wasn't nobody else to tell, came the answer. And, Pap, he allowed he'd kill me if I said anything to anybody for he got the money. He aims to get it all for himself.

What will he do? Will he go to Sheriff Knox? No, ma'am, Pap, he allowed if he's... done that away, the sheriff, he'd take most of the money. Papp's a-going right to that there bankfeller himself. Yes, yes. Go on, Judy. You see, ma'am, I done remembered the name of the bank and where it was, and Mr. Ward's name and all, on account of that there money letter of what you done sent him, and us being so

worried about it never getting there and all that. And Papp, he knows her man over and Gardner, what's on the railroad, you see, and what'll let him have money enough for the trip, a liquor man he is, and Papp's aiming to make it over to Gardner to get the money in time to catch that there early morning train. It's a right smart way over the mountains, but I reckons how Pap will make it. Soon as Papp left, I got to thinking what I'd done, and the more I studied about it about Mr. Burns having to go to prison, and about you all to caring for him the way

you does, and about how happy you was over his book, and how good you been to me, the sorrier I got, so I just couldn't stand to thinking about it any longer, and so I come as fast as I could to tell you, I allowed you'd

make it out to fix it some way, so Mr. Burns won't have to go to prison. Couldn't you all send a telegraph to that bankman or something? I'd get it into Thompsonville for you, ma'am, and Mr. Burns, he needn't never know nothing about it. 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 home or 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 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 Joe see you, because they mustn't know anything about what you. 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 Joe see you, because they must not know anything about what you've done. Do you understand, child? Yes, ma'am, 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 to worry none about me, said Judy. I can take care of myself, I reckon. But ain't you plump scared to go away on the cars alone, and you so old? "'Hold,' 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 tomorrow night, "'and in Chicago the next forenoon. "'I guess I'm 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 in 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 Joe. When she had completed her preparations for the trip, Auntie Sue wrote a short note to Betty Joe, 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 Joe's pocketbook.

Grave as she felt the situation to be, Auntie Sue laughed to herself as she pictured the consternation of Betty Joe 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 you doing 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 getting 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, women 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 catches sight of you all? Returned Judy 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 Joe see you, and be a good girl. I feel sure that everything will be all right. With a sudden, awkward movements, 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'd 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'am.

They are mostly a rather rough-looking 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 a smoker. I picked him up back there at Gardner. Perhaps you've heard of him. Jap Taylor. He's 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 a 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. End of Chapter 19. Chapter 20 of The Re Creation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Lieberbox recording is in the public,

Domain. Chapter 20. Brian and Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe. It wouldn't in the least surprise me if we were both hanged before night, returned Betty Joe. 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 on, said Brian, at last, when they had exhausted the resources of their combined imaginations. Auntie Sue knows exactly what she's 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 Joe 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 Joe, 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 Joe and he, Brian Kent, were to, quote, take care of things, end quote. 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 Joe 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 Joe, 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 Joe along? In the meantime, while Brian was confiding his grievances to the four-footed companions in the barn, Betty Joe was expressing herself in the kitchen. Betty Joe, 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 ashpan, 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 pocketbook 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 into breakfast in a few minutes, and you will sit down at the table with him. Across the table from him, facing him, Betty Joe, 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 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. Oh, Lord, Betty Joe, whatever 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 Joe 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 Joe does not in the least help matters,

and it 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 Joe Williams to become thoroughly acquainted. Betty Joe 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 rarely managed that breakfast very well, even if they did sit opposite. at 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 neighborwoman 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-pocket. point. Betty Joe 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 anyone come here. Don't you think we can do exactly what Auntie Sue said? Yes, returned Brian heartily. I'm 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 the dinner, and the supper had gone. It was the second day of their housekeeping that Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 clubmen who, in order to enjoy fully the beautiful life of God's unspoiled world, must needs take with him all of the sordid and viciousness. 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 Joe 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 Joe, 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 Joe. Oh, yes, we can stand it for a while, 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 in this lonesome hole very long, though. Don't you find it rather slow, Mrs. Burns? Poor Betty Joe's face turned fairly crimson. She could neither answer the stranger nor meet his gaze, but stood with downcast eyes, then looked up at Brian appealingly. But Brian was as embankly. But Brian was as embanky.

as Betty Joe, while the stranger, as he regarded them, smiled with an expression of insolent understanding. I guess I've 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. being manhandled by the enraged but helpless Brian.

Brian remained on the porch until he saw the man in his boat, leave the Yeti at the foot of the garden and row away up the river. In the house, again, the two faced each other in dismay. Betty Joe 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.

End of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 21. 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 things that 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 after 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. Someone shouted into the house for Jim, and a negro man in a 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, let her alone, protested someone 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 someone 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 do 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 someone. Had you 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. 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. Let's sort of nest, Erie. Duck, turkey, hen, dove, or rooster, came from different members of the chorus. Raising his glass as though offering a toast, he and, 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?' The 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 had 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, "'What's 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, 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 could 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 Jim said is how Mrs. Kent was wanting to see me. Be here you want of you and sure enough, Mrs. 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. 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. Everyone waited for Martha to speak.

Yes, she said slowly, watching the Mountain Girl, I am, Mr. says Brian Kent. Do you know my husband? Judy's black, beady eyes shifted slightly from one face to another, and her twisted body moved uneasily. No, ma'am, I ain't the same I knows him exactly. I done heard tell about him nigh about a year ago when there was some men from the city come through here hunting him. Everybody louses 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 a lot 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-made 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'am. I ain't got no truck with anybody on yon side the river. Is there anyone living with Annie Sue? Asked someone, 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 telling Ewan's, I don't know nothing about nobody. It ain't no sort or use for Ewan's to pester me. I don't know nothing about it, and I wouldn't tell Ewan's nothing 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'd 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's a darn 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 tonight, and she'll be all right. There was a laugh at this, and someone 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 damn sorry about this, Martha. I never dreamed I was starting anything, or I would have kept my mouth shut. It is Brian all right, she answered slowly. It is funny, but he has been on my mouth. mind all day. I never dreamed that it was this part of the country where he was supposed to

have been drowned, where 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's damn certain 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, 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. Ryan was a good man, Harry. That bank affair was really my fault. He never would have done such a good man, Harry. a thing if I hadn't deviled 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 anymore. 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 last. 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 tonight. And so, that evening, while Brian Kent and Betty Joe 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 in 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 disheveled 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 Joe had said good night, Brian walked the floor in uneasy wakefulness. The meeting with the man green and his two 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 backwood's home, had almost ceased to be.

Through Auntie Sue's teaching and influence, his work on his book, the growing companionship of Betty Joe 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. Someone 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 recreation 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 that log house, there was, like a deep undercurrent in the flow of his troubled thought, his love for Betty Joe. 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 recreated 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 a... its dark flood so mysteriously through the night between herself and the man yonder? A way 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 countercurrents 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 way? That sets the way. 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, let me be alone tonight. By 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, oh, 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 or 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 of reaching the sea. The man laughed harshly. You are quite poetical tonight. I believe I like you better, though, when you talk since. I'm 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 mountainside. Between the mighty walls of tree-clad hills that lifted their solemn crests into the midnight sky, the dark river poured the somber 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. End of Chapter 22 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 22. 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. Wood, there is an old. old lady out here who insists that you will see her. The boys passed her on to me because, well, she's 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 into anyone, from the Secretary of 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 Joe with you? Isn't the girl ever coming home? There is nothing to 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 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 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 as Auntie Sue wiped her eyes, as the schoolboy obediently took his seat in the big chair at the banker's desk, Homer T.W.T.W. Ward's eyes were not without a suspicious moisture. Tell me about Betty Joe first, the man insisted. You know, Auntie Sue, the girl grows dearer to me every year. Betty Joe 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 traveled 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.

Aunt 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 Joe 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 Joe. 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. By 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. Someone 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 him 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 home? Homer? 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. Why, I will be glad. 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 Joe seen this latest patient of yours? What does she think of his chances for complete recovery? Yes, Auntie Sue returned calmly. Betty Joe 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, and 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've 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'm 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. Hmm. 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 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 something, 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. End of Chapter 22. Chapter 23 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 23 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 somber 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, As one moving in a world of dreams, he went about his morning's work. Old prince winnieed his

usual greeting, but received no answer. Bess met him at the barnyard gate, but he did not speak. The sun leapt above the mountaintops, 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 garden and willow-fringed riverbank, 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 pill, and Betty Joe 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 him, each other across the breakfast table, Brian saw the gray eyes filled with questioning anxiety, as though Betty Joe also felt the presence of some forbidding specter at the meal. After several vain attempts to find something they could talk about, Betty Joe 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 they're not. is someone 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 Joe 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 thunderstorm before night, probably. And it was 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 in my room last night? The color in Betty Joe'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 Joe's cheeks, 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 was 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'd 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 Joe, 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 Joe, hearing in his voice that which told her how near he was to the surrogel. 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 Joe 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 passed. 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 Joe asked, What are you doing today? I was going to work on the fence around the clearing. he answered. Why?

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 Joe 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 someone 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 Joe answered emphatically, "'Indeed you are. I will not stay another minute in this house alone. Goodness knows what I will do tonight.'

There was no jest in the man's voice as he answered, "'I'll tell you what you will do tonight. 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 midday. 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 Joe'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 Joe 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 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 Joe 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 raves 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, Ryan, old sports, you won't introduce some. me, I'll have to introduce myself. She grinned with malicious triumph at Betty Joe. 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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. Goodbye, 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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 Joe! 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, rode the harder, while every awkward pool of the oars carried her nearer the deadly grip of the current. Betty Joe, as she reached Brian's side and saw what was happening on the river, grasped the man's arm appealingly with a cry.

"'Brien, Brian, she's 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 that 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 Joe, 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 Joe 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, 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 Joe 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 Joe 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! 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 Joe 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 in a 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 axe on the timbered mountainside 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 roar 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. The man's hand and arm appeared again above the surface, and was gone. Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 touched 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 Joe 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 mountainside, from his life in the clean atmosphere of the hills, and from the spiritual and mental companionship of the 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.

End of Chapter 23. Chapter 24 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 24, Judy's Return In the early evening twilight of the day following the tragedy at Elbow Rock, Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 passed, 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 Joe 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 Joe, and the latter went to the top of the steps. Good evening, Judy, said Betty Joe quietly. Won't you come in? Slowly, with her black, beady eyes fixed on Betty Joe's face,

Judy went up the steps. As the mountain girl reached the level of the porch floor, Betty Joe 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 to be a feared, Miss Betty Joe. You ain't never going to have no call to be scared of me again. Never.' "'I am so glad for you to say that, Judy,' returned Betty Joe, smiling.

"'I don't want to be afraid of you, and I am not really, but—' "'Ain't you all plumb-hating 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. It wouldn't be no more in nature, though, for you all to hate me. I sure have been poisoned 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 to put my foot inside this house, nor set with you all, nor nothing, till I've said what I done come to say. Betty Jo turned back to her again. What is it, Judy? Auntie Sue Don told me not to let you all and Mr. Burns see me till she come back, but I can't help it, and if I don't talk about that, none,

I reckon she ain't a-goin-to-mine so much. You all don't know that I'd see Dante-Sue that night, for she went away, and that it was me took her to the station, with old prince and brung them back, did you? No, said Betty Joe. 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 aiming to her, Judy returned.

But Auntie Sue don't know nothing about what's happened since she went away, and it's that what's making me come to you all. Betty Joe, 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 Almighty, Miss Betty, Miss Betty, Miss Betty. Joe, I didn't aim to do it. I sure didn't. For God, I'd let her kill me first, if only I'd had time to think. But it was me what told that there woman, how Mr. Burns was Brian Kent. It's me what's to blame for getting her killed in the river, and him so nigh drowned. Oh, God, oh God, if you'll only get well. And I ain't a feeling towards you all like. I did, Miss Betty Joe. I can't know more. I done left them clubhouse folks after I knowed what has happened, and all day I've been hanging around here in the brush. And Lucy Warden, she done told me this afternoon about how you all was taking care of Mr. Burns and how you just naturally

wouldn't let him die. And, and I can see now what it is that makes Auntie Sue and him and you all so different from that there clubhouse gang and pap and me. And I ain't a wanting to be like I've been, no more ever. I'd a heap rather jump into the river and drown myself. For God I would. And I want to come back and help you all take care of him and live with Annie Sue and be a might like youans if I can. Will you let me Miss Betty Joe, will you? I most know Annie Sue would if she was here. Before the Mountain Girl had finished speaking, Betty Joe's arm was around the poor twisted shoulders, and Betty Joe'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

in 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. End of Chapter 24. Chapter 25 of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 25. 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 Joe. Neither Auntie Sue nor Betty Joe, 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 Joe 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, Anne. She favored him with a Betty Joe smile. Shall I say, manager? Why not managing owner? he retorted. I am glad you confirmed 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 Joe. 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 nearby 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 Joe 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 time, total indebtedness. Again, Betty Joe 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 publisher's statement. Brian laughed. I have figured it. And your book has already earned more than enough to pay everything, said Betty Joe. 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 Joe's 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 business-like 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 check, 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 check 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 check for what you owe her, with interest, of course, and we will be all so happy, and don't you think I'm 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 really can't refuse now, can you? How, indeed, could he refuse?

So they worked it out together as Betty Joe 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 check 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 Almighty sure help me to do one good turn anyway, when I jumped into the river after that there book, when Mr. Burns Dunn throwed it away, commented the delighted Judy.

And while they laughed together, Betty Joe 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 Joe.

But that part of Homer T. Ward's letter which most excited Auntie Sue and caused Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe, when they had read and re-read that part of the letter, Dear old Uncle Homer may be a very conservative banker, but he is certainly more 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 played in the recreation 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 Joe 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 in 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 Joe had seen the clerk, Betty Joe's uncle supposed. What did she think of the fellow? Betty Joe thought Brian Kent was a rather nice fellow. And how had Betty Joe been amusing

herself while her old uncle was slaving in the city? Betty Joe 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 Joe 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 Joe was, had fallen in love with his stenographer. And finally, how Betty Joe'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 Joe, 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 Deere? And really, Homer T. Ward could find reason in Betty Joe's argument, which ended with that fatal trick question. Taking his agreement for granted, Betty Joe 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 need, 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 I 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 Joe very close for him, 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 mountainside when Brian Kent and Betty Joe 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 time-worn 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 skyline of their vision. and between them in 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 Joe'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 axe on his shoulder, and his dinner pail in his hand, who was he? And why was Betty Joe so familiar with this stranger? Betty Joe, who was usually so reserved with her air of competent self-reveld? possession. Homer T. Ward turned to look inquiringly at Auntie Sue. His old teacher smiled back

at him without speaking. Then Betty Joe 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 arms around her with the loving intimacy of a father, stood speechless with amazement, looking from Homer T. Ward and Betty Joe to Auntie Sue, and back to the banker and the girl. Mr. Ward, still not remembering the bank clerk in this recreated 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 Joe and then to Auntie Sue. Auntie Sue spoke.

Mr. Ward is the uncle and guardian of Betty Joe, Brian. Brian, ejaculated the banker. Auntie Sue continued. Homer, dear, Betty Joe has presented her or 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. It sure is Dad Burn funny how all tangled and snarled up everything can get before a body can think most. And then, if a body'll just keep on going right along, all to once, it's a little. It's a little. It's,

It's all straightened out, as pretty as anything. 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? Meaning is how the water gets all tangled and mixed up when it's a-boiling and a-roaring like mad down there at Elbeau Rock, and then all to once gets all smooth and calm-like again. returned Judy.

Meeting 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 indignity, 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 riverbank,

at the lower corner of the garden, where, at the eddy landing, a staunched John boat waited, he quipped and ready. When the last goodbyes were spoken, and Brian and Betty Joe 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 neighbormen and boys running and 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. End of Chapter 25. The End of The Recreation of Brian Kent by Harold Bell Wright. Read by Warren Coddy.