"Yes," he said slowly. "This book will always mean more to me than all
the others I may write."

For a moment their eyes met with unwavering frankness. Then Betty Jo
turned her face away, and Brian stiffened his shoulders, and sat a
little straighter in the seat beside her. That was all.

Very brave they were at the depot purchasing Betty Jo's ticket and
checking her trunk. With brave commonplaces they said good-bye when the
train pulled in. Bravely she waved at him from the open window of the
coach. And bravely Brian stood there watching until the train rounded
the curve and disappeared from sight between the hills.

The world through which Brian Kent drove that afternoon on his way back
to Auntie Sue and Judy in the little log house by the river was a very
dull and uninteresting world indeed. All its brightness and its beauty
seemed suddenly to have vanished. And as "Old Prince" jogged patiently
on his way, sleepily content with thoughts of his evening meal of hay
and grain, the man's mind was disturbed with thoughts which he dared not
own even to his innermost self.

"Circumstances to a man," Auntie Sue had said, "always meant a woman."
And Brian Kent, while he never under any pressure would have admitted
it, knew within his deepest self that it was a woman who had set him
adrift on the dark river that dreadful night when he had cursed the
world which he thought he was leaving forever.

"Circumstances" in the person of Auntie Sue had saved him from
destruction, and, in the little log house by the river, had brought