CHAPTER XXI.

The members of the clubhouse party were amusing themselves that afternoon in the various ways peculiar to their kind.

At one end of the wide veranda overlooking the river a group sat at a card table. At the other end of the roomy lounging place, men and women, lying at careless ease in steamer-chairs and hammocks, were smoking and chatting about such things as are of interest only to that strange class who are educated to make idleness the chief aim and end of their existence. On the broad steps leading down to the tree-shaded lawn, which sloped gently to the boat landing at the river's edge, still other members of the company were scattered in characteristic attitudes. Across the river, in the shade of the cottonwoods that overhang the bank, a man and a woman in a boat were ostensibly fishing. In a hammock strung between two trees, a little way from the veranda, lay a woman, reading.

Now and then a burst of shrill laughter broke the quiet of the surrounding forest. A man on the steps called a loud suggestive jest to the pair in the boat, and the woman waved her handkerchief in answer. The card-players argued and laughed over a point in their game. Some one shouted into the house for Jim, and a negro man in white jacket appeared. When the people on the veranda had expressed their individual tastes, the one who had summoned the servant called to the woman in the hammock under the tree, “What is yours, Martha?”

Without looking up from her book, the woman waved her hand, and answered, “I am not drinking this time. Thanks.”

A chorus of derisive shouts and laughter came from the veranda. But the woman went on reading. “Oh, let her alone!” protested some one, good-naturedly. “She was going a little strong, last night. She'll be all right by and by, when she gets started again.”

The negro, Jim, had returned with his loaded tray, and was passing among the members of the company with his assortment of glasses, when some one called attention to Harry Green, who was just pulling his boat up to the landing after his visit to the little log house down the river.

A boisterous chorus greeted the boatman: “Hello, Harry! Did you find anything? You're just in time. What'll you have?”

With a wave of greeting, the man fastened his boat to the landing, and started up the slope.

“He'll have a Scotch, of course!” said some one. “Did anybody ever know him to take anything else? Go and get it, Jim. He'll be nearly dead for a drink after rowing all that distance.”

The woman in the hammock lowered her book, and lay watching the man as he came up the path toward the steps.

Harry Green, who, apparently, was a person of importance among them, seated himself in an easy chair on the veranda, and accepted the glass proffered by Jim.

“Did you find any eggs, Harry?” demanded one. The man first refreshed himself with a long drink; then looked around with a grin of amused appreciation: “I didn't get any eggs,” he said; “but I found the nest all right.”

A shout of laughter greeted the reply.

“What sort of nest, Harry? Duck? Turkey? Hen? Dove? Or rooster?” came from different members of the chorus.

Raising his glass as though offering a toast, he answered: “Love! my children; love!”

A yell of delight came from the company, accompanied by a volley of: “A love-nest! Well, what do you know about that! Good boy, Harry! Takes Harry to find a love-nest! He's the boy to send for eggs! I should say, yes! Martha will like that! Oh, won't she!”

This last remark turned their attention toward the woman in the hammock, and they called to her: “Martha! Oh, Martha! Come here! You better look after Harry! Harry has found a love-nest! Told you something would happen if you let him go away alone!”

Putting aside her book, the woman came to join the company on the veranda.

She was rather a handsome woman, but with a suggestion of coarseness in form and features, though her face, in spite of its too-evident signs of dissipation, was not a bad face.

Seating herself on the top step, with her back against the post in an attitude of careless abandonment, she looked up at the negro who stood grinning in the doorway. “Bring me a highball, Jim: you know my kind.” Then to the company: “Somebody give me a cigarette.”

Harry tossed a silver case in her lap. Another man, who sat near, leaned over her with a lighted match.

Expelling a generous cloud of smoke from her shapely lips, she demanded: “What is this you are all shouting about Harry having another love-nest?”

During the answering chorus of boisterous laughter and jesting remarks, she drank the liquor which the negro brought.

Then Harry, pointing out Auntie Sue's house, which was easily visible from where they sat, related his experience. And among the many conjectures, and questions, and comments offered, no one suggested even that the man and the woman living in that little log house by the river might be entirely innocent of the implied charge. For those who are themselves guilty, to assume the guilt of others is very natural and altogether human.

In the moment's quiet which followed the arrival of a fresh supply of drinks, the woman called Martha said: “But what is the man like, Harry? You have enthused quite enough about the girl. Suppose you tell us about the man in the case.”

Harry gave a very good description of Brian Kent.

“Oh, damn!” suddenly cried Martha, shaking her skirt vigorously. She had spilled some of the liquor from her glass.

A woman on the outer edge of the circle whispered to her nearest neighbor, and a hush fell over the group.

“Well,” said Martha, drinking the liquor remaining in her glass, “why the devil don't we find out who they are, if we are so curious?”

“Find out! How? We'll find out a lot! What would you do,—ask them their names and where they are from?” came from the company.

“It is easy enough,” retorted Martha. “There is that native girl that Molly picked up the day we landed here to help her in the kitchen. She must belong in this neighborhood somewhere. I'll bet she can tell us something. What is her name?”

“Judy,—Judy Taylor. Great idea! Good! Send her out here, Jim,” responded the others.

When the deformed mountain girl appeared before them, she looked from face to face with such a frightened and excited expression on her sallow, old-young features, and such a wild light in her black beady eyes, that they regarded her with silent interest.

Judy spoke first, and her shrill monotone emphasized her excited state of mind: “That there nigger said as how Missus Kent was a-wantin' ter see me. Be ary one of youuns sure 'nough Missus Kent?”

The group drew apart a little, and every face was turned from Judy to the woman sitting on the top step of the veranda with her back against the post.

Judy went slowly toward the woman, her beady eyes fixed and staring as though at some ghostly vision. The woman rose to her feet as Judy paused before her.

“Be you-all Brian Kent's woman?” demanded Judy.

The excited exclamation from the company and the manner of the woman suddenly aroused the mountain girl to a realization of what she had done in speaking Brian Kent's name. With an expression of frightened dismay, she turned to escape; but the group of intensely interested spectators drew closer. Every one waited for Martha to speak.

“Yes,” she said, slowly, watching the mountain girl; “I am Mrs. Brian Kent. Do you know my husband?”

Judy's black beady eyes shifted slyly from one face to another, and her twisted body moved uneasily.

“No, ma'm; I ain't a-sayin' I knows him exactly. I done heard tell 'bout him nigh 'bout a year ago, when there was some men from the city come through here a-huntin' him. Everybody 'lows as how he was drowned at Elbow Rock.”

“The body was never found, though,” murmured one of the men in the group.

“Who lives in that little log house over there, Judy?” Harry Green asked suddenly, pointing.

“There? Oh, that there's Auntie Sue's place. I 'lowed everybody knowed that,” returned the girl.

“Who is Auntie Sue?” came the next question.

One of the women answered, before Judy could speak: “Auntie Sue is that old-maid school-teacher they told us about. Don't you remember, Harry?”

“Is Auntie Sue at home now, girl?” asked Mrs. Kent.

Judy's gaze was fixed on the ground as she replied: “I don't know, ma'm. I ain't got no truck with anybody on yon side the river.”

“Is there any one living with Auntie Sue?” asked some one; and in the same breath from another came the question, “Who is Mr. Burns?”

Judy jerked her twisted shoulders and threw up her head with an impatient defiance, as she returned shrilly: “I'm a-tellin' youuns I don't know nothin' 'bout nobody. Hit ain't no sort er use for youuns ter pester me. I don't know nothin' 'bout hit, an' I wouldn't tell youuns nothin' if I did.”

And with this, the mountain girl escaped into the house.

While her friends on the veranda were looking at each other in questioning silence, Mrs. Kent, without a word, turned and walked away into the woods.

As she disappeared among the trees, one of the men said, in a low tone: “You better go after her, Harry. She is on, all right, that it's Brian Kent. She never did believe that story about his death, you know. There is no knowing what she'll do when she gets to thinking it all over.”

“It is a darned shame,” exclaimed one of the women, “to have our party spoiled like this!”

“Spoiled nothing,” answered another. “Martha is too good a sport to spoil anything. Go on, Harry. Cheer her up. Bring her back here. We'll all help get her good and drunk to-night, and she'll be all right.”

There was a laugh at this, and some one said: “A little something wouldn't hurt any of us just now, I'm thinking. Here, Jim!”

Harry Green found Mrs. Kent sitting on the riverbank some distance above the boat landing.

She looked up at the sound of his approach, but did not speak. Dropping down beside her, the man said: “I'm damned sorry about this, Martha. I never dreamed I was starting anything, or I would have kept my mouth shut.”

“It is Brian, all right, Harry,” she answered, slowly. “It is funny, but he has been on my mind all day. I never dreamed that it was this part of the country where he was supposed to have been drowned, or I wouldn't have come here.”

“Well, what does it matter, anyway?” returned the man. “I don't see that it can make any difference. We don't need to go down there where he is, and it is damned certain that they won't call on us.”

Looking out over the river, the woman spoke as if thinking aloud: “This is just the sort of place he would love, Harry—the river and hills and woods. He never cared for the city—always wanted to get away into the country somewhere. Tell me, what is she really like? Does she look like—like—well,—like any of our crowd?”

One by one, the man picked a number of pebbles from among the dead leaves and the short grass within reach of his hand, as he answered: “Oh, I was just kidding when I raved about her to the bunch.” One by one, he flipped the bits of stone into the water. “She really doesn't amount to much. Honestly, I hardly noticed her.”

The woman continued speaking as though thinking her thoughts aloud: “Brian was a good man, Harry. That bank affair was really my fault. He never would have done such a thing if I hadn't devilled him all the time for more money, and made such a fuss about his wasting so much time in his everlasting writing. I'd hate to have him caught and sent to the 'pen' now.”

“You're a good sport, Martha,” he returned heartily. “I know just how you feel about it. And I can promise you that there is not one of our crowd that will ever whisper a thing. They are not that kind, and you know how they all like you. Come, dear. Don't bother your head about it any more. I don't like to see you like this. Let us go up to the house, and show them how game you are,—shall we?”

He put his arm about her, but the woman gently pushed him away. “Don't do that, now, Harry. Let me think.”

“That is just what you must not do,” he retorted, with a laugh. “Thinking can't help matters. Come, let us go get a drink. That is what you need.”

She looked at him some time before she answered; then, with a quick movement, she sprang to her feet:

“All right! You're on!” she cried, with a reckless laugh. “But you'll go some if you keep up with me to-night.”

And so, that evening, while Brian Kent and Betty Jo from the porch of the little log house by the river watched the twinkling lights of the clubhouse windows, the party with mad merriment tried to help a woman to forget.

But save for the unnatural brightness of her eyes and the heightened color in her face, drink seemed to have little effect on Martha Kent that night. When at a late hour the other members of the wild company, in various flushed and dishevelled stages of intoxication, finally retired to their rooms, Martha, in her apartment, seated herself at the window to look away over the calm waters of The Bend to a single light that showed against the dark mountainside. The woman did not know that the light she saw was in Brian Kent's room.

Long after Betty Jo had said good-night, Brian walked the floor in uneasy wakefulness. The meeting with the man Green and his too-evident thoughts as to the relations of the man and woman who were living together in the log house by the river filled Brian with alarm; while the very presence of the man from the city awoke old apprehensions that in his months of undisturbed quiet in Auntie Sue's backwoods home had almost ceased to be. Through Auntie Sue's teaching and influence; his work on his book; the growing companionship of Betty Jo and their love, Brian had almost ceased to think of that absconding bank clerk who had so recklessly launched himself on a voyage to the unknown in the darkness of that dreadful night. But, now, it all came back to him with menacing strength.

The man, Green, would talk to his companions of his visit to the log house that afternoon. He would tell what he had discovered. Curiosity would lead others of the clubhouse party to call. Some one might remember the story of the bank clerk, who was supposed to have lost his life in that neighborhood, but whose body was never found. There might even be one in the party who knew the former clerk. Through them the story would go back to the outside world. There would be investigations by those whose business it was never to forget a criminal who had escaped the law.

Brian felt his Re-Creation to be fully established; but what if his identity should be discovered before the restitution he would make should be also accomplished? And always, as he paced to and fro in his little room in the log house, there was, like a deep undercurrent in the flow of his troubled thought, his love for Betty Jo.

It is little wonder that, to Brian Kent, that night, the voices of the river were filled with fearful doubt and sullen, dreadful threatenings.

And what of the woman who watched the tiny spot of light that marked the window of the room where the re-created Brian Kent kept his lonely vigil? Did she, too, hear the voices of the river? Did she feel the presence of that stream which poured its dark flood so mysteriously through the night between herself and the man yonder?

Away back, somewhere in the past, the currents of their lives in the onward flow of the river had drawn together. For a period of time, their life-currents had mingled, and, with the stream, had swept onward as one. Other influences—swirls and eddies and counter-currents of other lives—had touched and intermingled until the current that was the man and the current that was the woman had drawn apart. For months, they had not touched; and, now, they were drawing nearer to each other again. Would they touch? Would they again mingle and become one? What was this mysterious, unseen, unknown, but always-felt, power of the river that sets the ways of its countless currents as it sweeps ever onward in its unceasing flow?

The door of her room opened. Harry Green entered as one assured of a welcome. The woman at the window turned her head, but did not move. Going to her, the man, with an endearing word, offered a caress; but she put him aside. “Please, Harry,—please let me be alone to-night?”

“Why, Martha, dear! What is wrong?” he protested, again attempting to draw her to him.

Resisting more vigorously, she answered: “Everything is wrong! You are wrong! I am wrong! All life is wrong! Can't you understand? Please leave me.”

The man drew back, and spoke roughly in a tone of disgust: “Hell! I believe you love that bank clerk as much as you ever did!”

“Well, and suppose that were true, Harry?” she answered, wearily. “Suppose it were true,—that I did still love my husband? Could that make any difference now? Can anything ever make any difference now? You will tire of me before long, just as you have grown tired of the others who were before me. Don't you suppose I know? You and our friends have taught me many things, Harry. I know, now, that Brian's dreams were right. That his dreams could never be realized, does not make them foolish nor wrong. His dreams that seemed so foolish—such impossible ideals—were more real, after all, than this life that we think so real. WE are the dreamers,—we and our kind,—and our awakening is as sure to come as that river out there is sure of reaching the sea.”

The man laughed harshly: “You are quite poetical, to-night. I believe I like you better, though, when you talk sense.”

“I am sorry, Harry,” she returned. “Please don't be cross with me! Go now,—please go!”

And something forced the man to silence. Slowly, he left the room. The woman locked the door. Returning to the window, she fell on her knees, and stretched her hands imploringly toward the tiny spot of light that still shone against the dark shadow of the mountain-side.

Between the mighty walls of tree-clad hills that lifted their solemn crests into the midnight sky, the dark river poured the sombre strength of its innumerable currents,—terrible in its awful power; dreadful, in its mysterious and unseen forces; irresistible in its ceaseless, onward rush to the sea of its final and infinite purpose!

And here and there on the restless, ever-moving surface of the shadowy, never-ending flood twinkled the reflection of a star.

The President of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank looked up from the papers on his desk as his secretary entered from the adjoining room and stood before him.

“Well, George?”

The secretary smiled as he spoke: “Mr. Ward, there is an old lady out here who insists that you will see her. The boys passed her on to me, because,—well, she is not the kind of woman that can be refused. She has no card, but her name is Wakefield. She—”

The dignified President of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank electrified his secretary by springing from his chair like a schoolboy from his seat at the tap of the teacher's dismissing bell. “Auntie Sue! I should say she couldn't be refused! Where is she?” And before the secretary could collect his startled thoughts to answer, Homer T. Ward was out of the room.

When the smiling secretary, the stenographers, and other attending employees had witnessed a meeting between their dignified chief and the lovely old lady, which strengthened their conviction that the great financier was genuinely human, President Ward and Auntie Sue disappeared into the private office.

“George,” said Mr. Ward, as he closed the door of that sacred inner sanctuary of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank, “remember I am not in to any one;—from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Sheriff, I am not in.”

“I understand, sir,” returned the still smiling George. And from that moment until Homer T. Ward should open the door, nothing short of a regiment could have interrupted the interview between Auntie Sue and her old pupil.

Placing the dear old lady tenderly in a deep, leather-upholstered chair, Mr. Ward stood before her as though trying to convince himself that she was real; while his teacher of those long-ago, boyhood days gazed smilingly up at him.

“What in the name of all that is unexpected are you doing here, Auntie Sue?” he demanded; “and why is not Betty Jo with you? Isn't the girl ever coming home? There is nothing the matter with her, is there? Of course not, or you would have wired me.”

It was not at all like the bank president to ask so many questions all at once.

Auntie Sue looked around the private office curiously, then smilingly back to the face of the financier.

“Do you know, Homer,” she said with her chuckling little laugh, “I—I—am almost afraid of you in here. Everything is so grand and rich-looking; and there were so many men out there who tried to tell me you would not see me. I—I am glad I didn't know it would be like this, or I fear I never could have found the courage to come.”

Homer T. Ward laughed, and then—rather full-waisted as he was—went down on one knee at the arm of her chair so as to bring his face level with her eyes.

“Look at me, Auntie Sue,” he said; “look straight through me, just as you used to do years and years ago, and tell me what you see.”

And the dear old lady, with one thin soft hand on his heavy shoulder, answered, as she looked: “Why, I see a rather naughty boy, whom I ought to spank for throwing spitballs at the old schoolroom ceiling,” she retorted. “And I am not a bit afraid to do it either. So sit right over there, sir, and listen to me.”

They laughed together then; and if Auntie Sue wiped her eyes as the schoolboy obediently took his seat in the big chair at the banker's desk, Homer T. Ward's eyes were not without a suspicious moisture.

“Tell me about Betty Jo first,” the man insisted. “You know, Auntie Sue, the girl grows dearer to me every year.”

“Betty Jo is that kind of a girl, Homer,” Auntie Sue answered.

“I suppose it is because she is all I have to love,” he said, “but, you know, ever since Sister Grace died and left the fatherless little kid to me, it seems like all my plans have centered around her; and now that she has finished her school; has travelled abroad, and gone through with that business-college course, I am beginning to feel like we should sort of settle down together. I am glad for her to be with you this summer, though, for the finishing touches; and when she comes home to stay, you are coming with her.”

Auntie Sue shook her head, smiling: “Now, Homer, you know that is settled: I will never leave my little log house by the river until I have watched the last sunset. You know, my dear boy, that I would be miserable in the city.”

It was an old point often argued by them, and the man dismissed it, now, with a brief: “We'll see about that when the time comes. But, why didn't you bring Betty Jo with you?”

“Because,” Auntie Sue answered, “I came away hurriedly, on a very important trip, for only a day, and it is necessary for her to stay and keep house while I am gone. The child must learn to cook, Homer, even if she is to inherit all your money.”

“I know,” answered the banker;—“the same as you make me work when I visit you. But your coming to me sounds rather serious, Auntie Sue. What is your trouble?”

The dear old lady laughed, nervously; for, to tell the truth, she did not quite know how she was going to manage to present Brian Kent's case to Homer T. Ward without presenting more than she was at this time ready to reveal.

“Why, you see, Homer,” she began, “it is not really my trouble as much as it is yours, and it is not yours as much as it is—”

“Betty Jo's?” he asked quickly, when she hesitated.

“No! no!” she cried. “The child doesn't even know why I am here. Just try to forget her for a few minutes, Homer.”

“All right,” he said; “but you had me worried for a minute.”

Auntie Sue might have answered that she was somewhat worried herself; but, instead, she plunged with desperate courage: “I came to see you about Brian Kent, Homer.”

It is not enough to say that the President of the Empire Consolidated Savings Bank was astonished. “Brian Kent?” he said at last. “Why, Auntie Sue, I wrote you nearly a year ago that Brian Kent was dead.”

“Yes, I know; but he was not—that is, he is not. But the Brian Kent your detectives were hunting was—I mean—is.”

Homer T. Ward looked at his old teacher as though he feared she had suddenly lost her mind.

“It is like this, Homer,” Auntie Sue explained: “A few days after your detective, Mr. Ross, called on me, this stranger appeared in the neighborhood. No one dreamed that he was Brian Kent, because, you see, he was not a bit like the description.”

“Full beard, I suppose?” commented the banker, grimly.

“Yes: and every other way,” continued Auntie Sue. “And he has been working so hard all winter; and everybody in the country respects and loves him so; and he is one of the best and truest men I ever knew; and he is planning and working to pay back every cent he took; and I cannot—I will not—let you send him to prison now.”

The lovely old eyes were fixed on the banker's face with sweet anxiety.

Homer T. Ward was puzzled. Strange human problems are often presented to men in his position; but, certainly, this was the strangest;—his old teacher pleading for his absconding clerk who was supposed to be dead.

At last he said, with gentle kindness: “But, why did you come to tell me about him, Auntie Sue? He is safe enough if no one knows who he is.”

“That is it!” she cried. “Some one found out about him, and is coming here to tell you, for the reward.”

The banker whistled softly. “And you—you—grabbed a train, and beat 'em to it!” he exclaimed. “Well, if that doesn't—”

Auntie Sue clasped her thin hands to her breast, and her sweet voice trembled with anxious fear: “You won't send that poor boy to prison, now, will you, Homer? It—it—would kill me if such a terrible thing were to happen now. Won't you let him go free, so that he can do his work,—won't you, Homer? I—I—” The strain of her anxiety was almost too much for the dear old gentlewoman's physical strength, and as her voice failed, the tears streamed down the soft cheeks unheeded.

In an instant the bank president was again on his knees beside her chair.

“Don't, Auntie Sue: don't, dear! Why, you know I would do anything in the world you asked, even if I wanted to send the fellow up; but I don't. I wouldn't touch him for the world. It is a thousand times better to let him go if he is proving himself an honest man. Please, dear, don't feel so. Why, I will be glad to let him off. I'll help him, Auntie Sue. I—I—am as glad as you are that we didn't get him. Please don't feel so about it. There, there,—it is all right, now.”

So he comforted and reassured her until she was able to smile through her tears. “I knew I could depend on you, Homer.”

A few minutes later, she said: “And what about that man who is coming to claim the reward, Homer?”

“Never you mind him!” cried the banker; “I'll fix that. But, tell me, Auntie Sue, where is young Kent now?”

“He is working in the neighborhood,” she returned.

He looked at her shrewdly. “You have seen a lot of him, have you?”

“I have seen him occasionally,” she answered. Homer T. Ward nodded his head, as if well pleased with himself. “You don't need to tell me any more. I understand, now, exactly. It is very clear what has reformed Brian Kent; you have been up to your old tricks. It is a wonder you haven't taken him into your house to live with you,—to save him from associating with bad people.”

He laughed, and when Auntie Sue only smiled, as though humoring him in his little joke, he added: “By the way, has Betty Jo seen this latest patient of yours? What does she think of his chances for complete recovery?”

“Yes,” Auntie Sue returned, calmly; “Betty Jo has seen him. But, really, Homer, I have never asked her what she thought of him.”

“Do you know, Auntie Sue,” said the banker, reflectively, “I never did believe that Brian Kent was a criminal at heart.”

“I know he is not,” she returned stoutly. “But, tell me, Homer, how did it ever happen?”

“Well, you see,” he answered, “young Kent had a wife who couldn't somehow seem to fit into his life. Ross never went into the details with me, fully, because that, of course, had no real bearing on the fact that he stole the money from the bank. But it seems that the youngster was rather ambitious,—studied a lot outside of business hours and that sort of thing. I know he made his own way through business college before he came to us. The wife didn't receive the attention she thought she should have, I suppose. Perhaps she was right at that. Anyway, she wanted a good time;—wanted him to take her out more, instead of spending his spare time digging away at his books. And so it went the usual way,—she found other company. Rather a gay set, I fancy; at least it led to her needing more money than he was earning, and so he helped out his salary, thinking to pay it back before he was caught, I suppose. Then the crash came,—some other man, you know,—and Brian skipped, which, of course, put us next to his stealing. I don't know what has become of the woman. The last Ross knew of her she was living in St. Louis, and running with a pretty wild bunch,—glad to get rid of Brian, I expect. She couldn't have really cared so very much for him.

“Do you know, Auntie Sue, I have seen so many cases like this one. I have been glad, many times, that I never married. And then, again, sometimes, I have seen homes that have made me sorry I never took the chance. I am glad you saved the boy, Auntie Sue: I am mighty glad.”

“You have made me very happy, Homer,” Auntie Sue returned. “But are you sure you can fix it about that reward? The man who is coming to claim it will make trouble, won't he, if he is not paid, somehow?”

“Yes, I expect he would,” returned the president, thoughtfully. “And my directors might have something to say. And there are the Burns people and the Bankers' Association and all. Hum-m-m!”

Homer T. Ward considered the matter a few moments, then he laughed. “I'll tell you what we will do, Auntie Sue; we will let Brian Kent pay the reward himself. That would be fair, wouldn't it?”

Auntie Sue was sure that Brian would agree that it was a fair enough arrangement; but she did not see how it was to be managed.

Then her old pupil explained that he would pay the reward-money to the man who was coming to claim it, and thus satisfy him, and that the bank would hold the amount as a part of the debt which Brian was expected to pay.

Auntie Sue never knew that President Ward himself paid to the bank the full amount of the money stolen by Brian Kent in addition to the reward-money which he personally paid to Jap Taylor, in order to quiet him, and thus saved Brian from the publicity that surely would have followed any other course.

It should also be said here that Judy's father never again appeared in the Ozarks; at least, not in the Elbow Rock neighborhood. It might be that Jap Taylor was shrewd enough to know that his reputation would not permit him to show any considerable sum of money, where he was known, without starting an investigation; and for men of his type investigations are never to be desired.

Or it is not unlikely that the combination of money and the city proved the undoing of the moonshiner, and that he came to his legitimate and logical end among the dives and haunts of his kind, to which he would surely gravitate.

The day following that night of Brian Kent's uneasy wakefulness was a hard day for the man and the woman in the little log house by the river.

For Brian, the morning dawned with a sense of impending disaster. He left his room while the sky was still gray behind the eastern mountains, and the mist that veiled the brightness of the hills seemed to hide in its ghostly depths legions of shadowy spirits that from his past had assembled to haunt him. The sombre aisles and caverns of the dimly lighted forest were peopled with shadowy memories of that life which he had hoped would never again for him awake. And the river swept through its gray world to the crashing turmoil at Elbow Rock like a thing doomed to seek forever in its own irresistible might the destruction of its ever-living self.

As one moving in a world of dreams, he went about his morning's work. “Old Prince” whinnied his usual greeting, but received no answer. “Bess” met him at the barnyard gate, but he did not speak. The sun leaped above the mountain-tops, and the world was filled with the beauty of its golden glory. From tree and bush and swaying weed, from forest and pasture, and garden and willow-fringed river-bank, the birds voiced their happy greetings to the new day. But the man neither saw nor heard.

When he went to the house with his full milk-pail, and Betty Jo met him at the kitchen-door with her cheery “Good-morning!” he tried resolutely to free himself from the mood which possessed him, but only partially succeeded. Several times, as the two faced each other across the breakfast table, Brian saw the gray eyes filled with questioning anxiety, as though Betty Jo, also, felt the presence of some forbidding spectre at the meal.

After several vain attempts to find something they could talk about, Betty Jo boldly acknowledged the situation by saying: “What in the world is the matter with us, this morning, Mr. Burns? I am possessed with the feeling that there is some one or something behind me. I want to look over my shoulder every minute.”

At her words, Brian involuntarily turned his head for a quick backward glance.

“There!” cried Betty Jo, with a nervous laugh, not at all like her normal, well-poised self. “You feel it, too!”

Brian forced a laugh in return: “It is the weather, I guess.” He tried to speak with casual ease. “The atmosphere is full of electricity this morning. We'll have a thunder-storm before night, probably.”

“And was it the electricity in the air that kept you tramping up and down your room last night until almost morning?” she demanded abruptly, with her characteristic opposition to any evasion of the question at issue.

Brian retorted with a smile: “And how do you know that I tramped up and down my room last night?”

The color in Betty Jo's cheeks deepened as she answered, “I did not sleep very well either.”

“But, I surely did not make noise enough for you to hear in your room?” persisted Brian.

The color deepened still more in Betty Jo's checks, as she answered honestly: “I was not in my room when I heard you.” She paused, and when he only looked at her expectantly, but did not speak, continued, in a hesitating manner quite unlike her matter-of-fact self: “When I could not sleep, and felt so as though there were somebody or something in the house that had no business here, I became afraid, and opened my door so I would not feel so much alone; and then I saw the light under the door of your room, and,—” she hesitated, but finished with a little air of defiance,—“and I went and listened outside your door to see if you were up.”

“Yes?” said Brian Kent, gently.

“And when I heard you walking up and down, I wanted to call to you; but I thought I better not. It made me feel better, though, just to know that you were there; and so, pretty soon, I went back to my room again.”

“And then?” said Brian.

“And then,” confessed Betty Jo, “whatever it was that was keeping me awake came back, and went on keeping me awake until I was simply forced to go to you for help again.”

Poor Betty Jo! She knew very well that she ought not to be saying those things to the man who, while he listened, could not hide the love that shone in his eyes.

And Brian Kent, as he thought of this woman, whom he loved with all the strength of his best self, creeping to the door of his room for comfort in the lonely night, scarcely dared trust himself to speak. At last, when their silence was becoming unbearable, he said, gently: “You poor child! Why didn't you call to me?”

And Betty Jo, hearing in his voice that which told her how near he was to the surrender that would bring disaster to them both, was aroused to the defense. The gray eyes never wavered as she answered, bravely: “I was afraid of that, too.”

And so Betty Jo confessed her love that answered so to his need; but, in her very confession, saved their love from themselves. If she had lowered her eyes—Brian Kent, in reverent acknowledgment, bowed his head before her. Then, rising, he walked to the window, where he stood for some time looking out, but seeing nothing.

“It was that horrid man coming yesterday that has so upset us,” said Betty Jo, at last. “We were getting on so beautifully, too. I wish he had gone somewhere else for his vegetables and eggs and things!”

Brian was able to smile at this as he turned to face her again, and they both knew that,—for that time, at least,—the danger-point was safely past.

“I wish so, too,” he agreed; “but never mind; Auntie Sue will be home in a day or two, and then everything will be all right again.”

But when he had taken his hat and was starting out for the day's work, Betty Jo asked, “What are you doing to-day?”

“I was going to work on the fence around the clearing,” he answered. “Why?”

“I—I—wish you could find something to do nearer the house,” came the slow answer. “Couldn't you work in the garden, perhaps?”

“I should say I could!” he returned heartily.

All that forenoon, as Betty Jo went about her household duties she felt the presence of the thing that filled her so with fear and dread. With vigorous determination she scolded herself for being so foolish, and argued with herself that it was all a nervous fancy born of her restless night. But, the next moment, she would start with a sudden fear and turn quickly as if to face some one whose presence she felt behind her. And Brian, too, as he worked in the garden, caught himself often in the act of pausing to look about with nervous apprehension.

During the noonday meal they made a determined effort to laugh at themselves, and by the time dinner was over had almost succeeded. But when Brian, as he pushed back his chair, said, jestingly, “Well, am I to work in the garden again this afternoon?” Betty Jo answered, emphatically, “Indeed you are! I will not stay another minute in this house alone. Goodness knows what I will do to-night!”

There was no jest in the man's voice as he answered: “I'll tell you what you will do to-night,—you will go to bed and you will go to sleep. You will leave the door to your room wide-open, and I shall lie right there on that couch, so near that a whisper from you will reach me. We will have no more of this midnight prowling, I promise you. If any ghost dares appear, we—”

The reassuring words died on Brian Kent's lips. His eyes, looking over Betty Jo's shoulders, were fixed and staring, and the look on his face sent a chill of horror to the girl's heart. She dared not move nor look around as he sat like a man turned to stone.

A woman's laugh broke the dead silence.

With a scream, Betty Jo sprung to her feet and whirled about.

As one in a trance, Brian Kent arose and stood beside her.

The woman, who stood in the open doorway, laughed again.

Martha Kent's heavy drinking the night before, when her clubhouse friends in a wild debauch had tried to help her to forget, was the climax of many months of like excesses. The mood in which she had sent the man Green from her room was the last despairing flicker of her better instincts. Moved by her memories of better things,—of a better love and dreams and ideals,—she had spent a little hour or two in sentimental regret for that which she had so recklessly cast aside. And then, because there was within her no foundation of abiding principle for her sentiment, she had again put on the character which had so separated her from the life of the man to whom she was married, indeed, but with whom she was never one. With the burning consciousness of what she might have been and of what she was ever tormenting her, she sank, as the hours passed, deeper and deeper into the quicksands of physical indulgence until, in her mad determination to destroy utterly her ability to feel remorse, she lost all mental control of herself, and responded to every insane whim of her drink-disordered brain.

As she stood there, now, in the doorway of that little log house by the river,—face to face with the man and the woman who, though they were united in their love, were yet separated by the very fact of her existence,—she was, in all her hideous, but pitiful, repulsiveness, the legitimate creation of those life-forces which she so fitly personified.

Betty Jo instinctively drew closer to Brian's side.

“Hello, Brian, dear!” said the woman, with a drunken leer. “Thought I'd call to see you in your charming love-nest that Harry Green raved so about. Can't you introduce me to your little sweetheart?”

“No?” she continued, and laughed again. Then coming an unsteady step toward them, she added, thickly: “Very well, Brian, old sport; you won't introduce me,—I'll have to introduce myself.” She grinned with malicious triumph at Betty Jo: “Don't be frightened, my dear. It's all right. I'm nobody of importance,—just his wife,—that's all,—just his wife.”

Betty Jo, with a little cry, turned to the man who stood as if stricken dumb with horror. “Brian?” she said. “Oh, Brian?”

It was the first time she had ever addressed him by his given name, and Brian Kent, as he looked, saw in those gray eyes no hint of doubt or censure, but only the truest love and sympathy. Betty Jo had not failed in the moment of her supreme testing.

“It's true, all right, isn't it, Brian?” said Martha Kent. “I'm his wife fast enough, my dear. But you don't need to worry,—you two. I'm a good sport,—I am. I've had my fun. No kick coming from me. Just called to pay my respects,—that's all. So-long, Brian, old sport! Good-bye, my dear!”

With an uncertain wave of her hand, she staggered through the doorway and passed from their sight.

In the little log house by the river the two who had kept the fineness of their love stood face to face.

For Betty Jo, the barrier which Brian Kent had maintained between them to protect her from his love was no longer a thing unknown. But the revelation, coming as it did, had brought no shadow of distrust or doubt of the man to whom she had so fully entrusted herself. It had, indeed, only strengthened her faith in him and deepened her love.

For one glorious triumphal moment the very soul of the man exulted in the truth which Betty Jo made known to him. Then he turned slowly away, for he dared not trust himself to look at her a moment longer.

With bowed head he paced up and down the room. He went to the table which held Auntie Sue's sewing-basket, and fingered the trifles there. Then, slowly, he passed through the open door to the porch, where Betty Jo, through the window, near which she stood, saw him look away over the river and the mountains.

Suddenly, she saw him start, and stare intently at some nearer object that had caught his attention. As Betty Jo watched, he moved to the edge of the porch, and, stooping, grasped the railing with his hands;—his head and shoulders were thrust forward; his lips were parted; his whole attitude was that of the most intense and excited interest. Then, straightening up, he threw back his head, and laughed aloud. But his laughter alarmed the girl, who ran to the door, crying, “What is it, Brian?”

“Look!” he shouted, madly, and pointed toward the river. “Look, Betty Jo!”

Martha Kent, alone in one of the clubhouse boats, was rowing with drunken clumsiness toward the head of the Elbow Rock rapids.

The woman's friends had missed her, and, guessing, from some remark she had made, where she had gone, had sent four men of the party after her; for they realized that she was in no condition to be alone in a boat on the river, particularly on that part of the stream near Auntie Sue's place. After leaving Brian and Betty Jo, she had gone back to her boat in the eddy at the foot of the garden, and was pulling out into the stream when she saw her friends approaching. With a drunken laugh, she waved her hand, and began rowing from them directly toward the swift water. The men shouted for her to stop, and pulled with all their strength. But the woman, taking their calls as a challenge, rowed the harder, while every awkward pull of the oars carried her nearer the deadly grip of the current.

Betty Jo, as she reached Brian's side, and saw what was happening on the river, grasped the man's arm appealingly, with a cry: “Brian! Brian! She is going into the rapids! She will be carried down to Elbow Rock!”

But Brian Kent, for the moment, was beside himself. All that he had suffered,—all that the woman out there on the river had cost him in anguish of soul,—all that she had taken from him of happiness,—came before him with blinding vividness; and now,—now,—in her drunkenness, she was making her own way to her own destruction.

“Of course she is!” he shouted, in answer to Betty Jo. “Her friends yonder are driving her to it! Could anything be more fitting?”

As though grasped by powerful unseen hands beneath the surface, the boat shot forward. The woman, feeling the sudden pull of the current, stopped rowing, and looked about as if wondering what had happened. Her friends, not daring to follow closer to the dangerous water, were pulling madly for the landing at the foot of the garden. The boat in the middle of the river moved faster.

“Look, Betty Jo, look!” shouted the man on the porch, madly. “It's got her now—the river has got her—look!”

With a scream of fear, the woman in the boat dropped her oars, and grasped the gunwale of the little craft.

Brian Kent laughed.

Betty Jo shrank back from him, her eyes, big with horror, fixed upon his face. Then, with a quick movement, she sprang toward him again, and, catching his arm, shook him with all her strength and struck him again and again with her fist.

“Brian! Brian!” she cried. “You are insane!”

The man looked down at her for an instant with an expression of bewildered astonishment on his face, as one awakened from a dream. He raised his hand and drew it across his forehead and eyes.

The boat with the helpless woman was already past the front of the house.

Betty Jo cried again as if calling the man she loved from a distance: “Brian! Brian!”

With a sudden movement, the man jerked away from her. The next instant, he had leaped over the railing of the porch to the ground below and was running with all his might toward the river, at an angle which would put him opposite or a little below the boat when he reached the bank.

With a sob, Betty Jo followed as fast as she could.

As Brian Kent raced toward the river's edge, the powerful current drew the boat with the woman into the first rough water of the rapids, and, as the skiff was shaken and tossed by the force that was sweeping it with ever-increasing speed toward the wild turmoil at Elbow Rock, the woman screamed again and again for help.

The warring forces of the stream whirled the little craft about, and she saw the man who was nearing the bank. She rose to her feet in the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,—calling his name, “Brian! Brian! Brian!” Then the impact of the boat against a larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung to the thwarts with piteous cries.

Betty Jo and the clubhouse men, who had overtaken her, saw Brian as he reached the river opposite the boat. For a little way he raced the tumbling waters until he had gained a short distance ahead of the skiff; then they saw him, without an instant's pause, leap from the high bank far out into the boiling stream.

Running along the bank, the helpless watchers saw the man fighting his way toward the boat. One moment, he disappeared from sight, dragged beneath the surface by the powerful currents with which he wrestled. The next instant, the boiling waters would toss him high on the crest of a rolling wave, only to drag him down again a second later. But, always, he drew nearer and nearer the object of his struggle, while the rapids swept both the helpless woman and the tossing boat and the swimming man onward toward the towering cliff, and the thunder-roar of the mad waters below grew louder and louder.

The splendid strength of arms and shoulders which Brian Kent had acquired by his months of work with his ax on the timbered mountain-side sustained him now in his need. With tremendous energy, he breasted the might of the furious river. To the watchers it seemed at times that it was beyond the power of human muscles to endure the terrific strain. Then he gained the boat, and they saw him striving with desperate energy to drag it toward the opposite shore and so into the currents that would carry it past the menacing point of the cliff and perhaps to the safety of the quiet water below.

All that human strength could do in that terrible situation, Brian Kent did. But the task was beyond the power of mortal man.

For an instant the breathless watchers on the bank thought there was a chance; but the waters with mad fury dragged their victims back, and, with terrific power, hurled them forward toward the frowning rocks.

It was quickly over.

In that wild turmoil of the boiling, leaping, seething, lashing, hammering waves, the boat, with the woman who crouched on her knees on the bottom, and the man who clung to the side of the craft, appeared for a second lifted high in the air. The next instant, the crash of breaking wood sounded above the thundering roaring of the waters. The man and the woman disappeared. The wreck of the boat was flung again and again against the cliff, until, battered and broken, it was swept away around the point.

Against the dark wall of rock Brian Kent's head and shoulders appeared for an instant, and they saw that he held the woman in his arms. The furious waters closed over them. For the fraction of a second, the man's hand and arm appeared again above the surface, and was gone.

Betty Jo sank to the ground with a low cry of anguish, and hid her face.

Another moment, and she was aroused by a loud shout from one of the men who had caught a glimpse of the river's victims farther out at the point of the rocky cliff.

Springing to her feet, Betty Jo started madly up the trail that leads over the bluff. The men followed.

Immediately below Elbow Rock there is a deep hole formed by the waters that pour around the point of the cliff, and below this hole a wide gravelly bar pushing out from the Elbow Rock side of the stream forces the main volume of the river to the opposite bank. In the shallow water against the upper side of the bar they found them.

With the last flicker of his consciousness, Brian Kent had felt his feet touch the bottom where the water shoals against the bar, and, with his last remaining strength, had dragged himself and the body of the woman into the shallows.

Betty Jo was no hysterical weakling to spend the priceless seconds of such a time in senseless ravings. The first-aid training which she had received at school gave her the necessary knowledge which her native strength of character and practical common sense enabled her to apply. Under her direction, the men from the clubhouse worked as they probably never had worked before in all their useless lives.

But the man and the woman whose life-currents had touched and mingled,—drawn apart to flow apparently far from each other, but drawn together again to once more touch, and, as one, to endure the testing of the rapids,—the man and the woman had not brought to the terrible ordeal the same strength.

One was drawn into the Elbow Rock rapids by the careless indifference and the reckless spirit that was born of the life she had chosen; by her immediate associates and environment; and by the circumstances that were, at the last analysis, of her own making.

The other braved the same dangers, strong in the splendid spirit that had set him against such terrible odds to attempt the woman's rescue. From his work on the timbered mountain-side, from his life in the clean atmosphere of the hills, and from the spiritual and mental companionship of that little log house by the river, he had brought to his testing the splendid strength which enabled him to endure.

Somewhere in that terrible conflict with the wild waters at Elbow Rock, while the man whose life she had so nearly ruined by her wantonness was fighting to save her, the soul of Martha Kent went from the bruised and battered body which Brian drew at last from the vicious grasp of the currents.

But the man lived.

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