W

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