The Re-Creation of Brian Kent | Page 4

if only they will love you; and that they are sure to do, because,--well,
just because-- You must remember, too, that you will be eighty-seven
years old the eighteenth of next November, and it is therefore quite
time that someone put you in a book.
And, after all, Auntie Sue, are you very sure that you have never lived
in a little log house by the river,--are you very sure, Auntie Sue?
Forgive my impertinence, as you have always forgiven me everything;
and love me just the same, because I have written only in love of the
dearest Auntie Sue in the world!
Signature [Harold]
The Glenwood Mission Inn, Riverside, California, April 30, 1919.

"And see the rivers, how they run Through woods and meads, in shade
and sun, Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,-- Wave succeeding wave,
they go A various journey to the deep Like human life to endless
sleep!"
John Dyer--"Grongar Hill."

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
A REMARKABLE WOMAN
II. THE MAN IN THE DARK
III. A MISSING LETTER
IV. THE WILL OF THE RIVER
V. AUNTIE SUE RECOGNIZES A GENTLEMAN
VI. IN THE LOG HOUSE BY THE RIVER
VII. OFFICERS OF THE LAW
VIII. THAT WHICH IS GREATER THAN THE LAW
IX. AUNTIE SUE'S PROPOSITION
X. BRIAN KENT DECIDES
XI. RE-CREATION
XII. AUNTIE SUE TAKES A CHANCE
XIII. JUDY TO THE RESCUE
XIV. BETTY JO CONSIDERS
XV. A MATTER OF BUSINESS
XVI. THE SECRET OF AUNTIE SUE'S LIFE

XVII. AN AWKWARD SITUATION
XVIII. BETTY JO FACES HERSELF
XIX. JUDY'S CONFESSION
XX. BRIAN AND BETTY JO KEEP HOUSE
XXI. THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW
XXII. AT THE EMPIRE CONSOLIDATED SAVINGS BANK
XXIII. IN THE ELBOW ROCK RAPIDS
XXIV. JUDY'S RETURN
XXV. THE RIVER

ILLUSTRATIONS
BETTY JO
"LOOK, JUDY! LOOK!
AUNTIE SUE SAID, SOFTLY, "SHE DID NOT UNDERSTAND,
BRIAN"
* * * SHE MADE THE LITTLE BOOK OF PAINFUL MEMORIES A
BOOK OF JOYOUS PROMISE

THE RE-CREATION OF BRIAN KENT
CHAPTER I.
A REMARKABLE WOMAN.

I remember as well as though it were yesterday the first time I met
Auntie Sue.
It happened during my first roaming visit to the Ozarks, when I had
wandered by chance, one day, into the Elbow Rock neighborhood.
Twenty years it was, at least, before the time of this story. She was
standing in the door of her little schoolhouse, the ruins of which you
may still see, halfway up the long hill from the log house by the river,
where the most of this story was lived.
It was that season of the year when the gold and brown of our Ozark
Hills is overlaid with a filmy veil of delicate blue haze and the world is
hushed with the solemn sweetness of the passing of the summer. And
as the old gentlewoman stood there in the open door of that rustic
temple of learning, with the deep-shadowed, wooded hillside in the
background, and, in front, the rude clearing with its crooked rail fence
along which the scarlet sumac flamed, I thought,--as I still think, after
all these years,--that I had never before seen such a woman.
Fifty years had gone into the making of that sterling character which
was builded upon a foundation of many generations of noble ancestors.
Without home or children of her own, the life strength of her splendid
womanhood had been given to the teaching of boys and girls. An
old-maid schoolteacher? Yes,--if you will. But, as I saw her standing
there that day,--tall and slender, dressed in a simple gown that was
fitting to her work,--there was a queenly dignity, a stately sweetness, in
her bearing that made me feel, somehow, as if I had come unexpectedly
into the presence of royalty. Not the royalty of caste and court and
station with their glittering pretenses of superiority and their superficial
claims to distinction,--I do not mean that; I mean that true royalty
which needs no caste or court or station but makes itself felt because it
IS.
She did not notice me at first, for the noise of the children at play in the
yard covered the sound of my approach, and she was looking far, far
away, over the river which lay below at the foot of the hill; over the
forest-clad mountains in the glory of their brown and gold; over the
vast sweep of the tree-crowned Ozark ridges that receded wave after

wave into the blue haze until, in the vastness of the distant sky, they
were lost. And something made me know that, in the moment's respite
from her task, the woman was looking even beyond the sky itself.
Her profile, clean-chiselled, but daintily formed, was beautiful in its
gentle strength. Her hair was soft and silvery like the gray mist of the
river in the morning. Then she turned to greet me, and I