The Re-Creation of Brian Kent   By: Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944)

By Harold Bell Wright

DEAR AUNTIE SUE:

I have wondered many times, while writing this simple story of life and love, if you would ever forgive me for putting you in a book. I hope you will, because if you do not, I shall be heartbroken, and you wouldn't want me that way, would you, Auntie Sue?

I fancy I can hear you say: "But, Harold, how COULD you! You know I never did the things you have made me do in your story. You know I never lived in a little log house by the river in the Ozark Mountains! What in the world will people think!"

Well, to tell the truth, dear, I don't care so very much what people think 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.