ntie Sue continued.
"I have known her since she was a baby. When she finished her education
in the seminary, and had travelled abroad for a few months, she decided
all at once that she wanted a course in a business college, which was
just what any one knowing her would expect her to do."

"Sounds steady and reliable," commented Brian. "But will she come?"

"Yes, indeed, she will, and be tickled to death over the job," returned
Auntie Sue. "I'll write her at once."

While Auntie Sue was preparing to write her letter, Judy muttered, in
a tone which only Brian heard: "Just the same, 'tain't no name for a
common gal ter have; hit sure ain't. There's somethin' dad burned queer
'bout hit somewhere."

"Nonsense! Judy," said Brian in a low voice; "don't worry Auntie Sue."

"I ain't aimin' ter worry her none," returned the mountain girl; "but
I'll bet you-all a pretty that this here gal'll worry both of youuns
'fore you are through with her;--me, too, I reckon."

For some reason, Auntie Sue's letter to Betty Jo seemed to be rather
long. In fact, she spent the entire evening at it; which led Judy to
remark that "hit sure looked like Auntie Sue was aimin' ter write a book
herself."

A neighbor who went to Thompsonville the following day with a load of
hogs for shipment, posted the letter. And, in due time, another neighbor
brought the answer. Betty Jo would come.

It was the day following the evening when Brian wrote the last page of
his book that another letter came to Auntie Sue,--a letter which, for
the second time, very nearly wrecked Brian Kent's world.

CHAPTER XIII.

JUDY TO THE RESCUE.

Brian was working in the garden. It was early in the afternoon, and the
man, as he worked in the freshly ploughed ground, was rejoicing at the
completion of his book.

Straightening up from his labor, he drew a deep breath of the fragrant
air. About him on every side, and far away into the blue distance, the
world was dressed in the gala dress of the season. The river, which at
the breaking of the winter had been a yellow flood that washed the top
of the bank in front of the house and covered the bottom-lands on the
opposite side, was again its normal self, and its voice to him, now, was
a singing voice of triumphal gladness.

For Brian, too, the world was new, and fresh, and beautiful. The world
of his winter was gone. He had found himself in his work, and in the
glorious consciousness of the fact he felt like shoutin