ing together and
drinking a toast to Auntie Sue. . . ."

Auntie Sue went with the letter to Brian, and acquainted him with that
part of the banker's communication which related to the absconding
clerk; but, about her relation to the president of the Empire
Consolidated Savings Bank, she said nothing.

"Isn't it splendid!" she finished, her face glowing with delight.

"Splendid?" he echoed, looking at her with grave, questioning eyes.

"Why, yes, of course!" she returned. "Aren't you glad to be so dead,
under the circumstances? Think what it means! You are free, now. No
horrid old detectives dogging your steps, or waiting behind every bush
and tree to pounce upon you. There is nothing, now, to prevent your
being the kind of man that you always meant to be,--and really ARE,
too,--except for your--your accidental tumble in the river," she
finished with her low chuckling laugh. "And, some day," she went on,
with conviction, "when you have established yourself,--when you have
asserted your REAL self, I mean,--and have paid back every penny of the
money, Homer T. Ward and Mr. Ross and everybody will be glad that they
didn't catch you before you had a chance to save yourself."

"And you, Auntie Sue?" Brian's voice was deep with feeling: "And you?"

"Me? Oh, I am as glad, now, as I can ever be, because, you see, to me it
is already done."

For a long minute he looked at her without speaking, then turned his
face away to gaze out over the river and the hills; but his eyes were
the eyes of one who looks without seeing.

Slowly, he said: "I wish I could be sure. There was a time when I
was--when I believed in myself. It seems to me, now, that it was years
and years ago. I thought, then, that nothing could shake me in my
purpose; that nothing could check me in my ambition. I saw myself going
straight on to the goal I had set for myself as certainly as--well, as
your river ever there goes on to the sea. But now--" He shook his head
sadly.

Auntie Sue laughed. "You foolish boy. My river out there doesn't go
straight at all. It meets all sorts of obstacles, and is beset by all
sorts of conflicting influences, and so is forced to wind and twist and
work its way along; but, the big, splendid thing about the river is that
it keeps going on. It never stops to turn back. No matter what happens
to it, it never stops. It goes on and on and on unto the very end, until
it finally loses itself in the triumph of its own achievement,--t