And as he sat there, the man was conscious that he had reached one
of those turning-points that are found in every life where results,
momentous and far-reaching, are dependent upon comparatively unimportant
and temporary issues. He could not have told why, and yet he felt a
certainty that, for him, two widely separated futures were dependent
upon his choice. Nor could he, by thinking, discover what those futures
held for him, nor which he should choose. Even as his boat that night
had hung on the edge of the eddy,--hesitating on the dividing-line
between the two currents,--so the man himself now felt the pull of his
life-currents, and hesitated,--undecided.

Looking toward the house, he thought how like the life offered by Auntie
Sue was to the quiet waters of The Bend, and--his mind finished the
simile--how like the life to which he would go was to the rapids at
Elbow Rock; and, yet, he reflected, the waters could never reach the
sea without enduring the turmoil of the rapids. And, again, the thought
came, "The Bend is just as much the river as the troubled passage around
the rock."

When he had given up life, and, to all intent and purpose, had left life
behind him, the river, without his will or knowledge, had mysteriously
elected to save him from the death he had chosen as his only refuge from
the utter ruin that had seemed so inevitable. As the currents of the
river had carried his boat to the eddy at the foot of Auntie Sue's
garden, the currents of life had mysteriously brought him to the saving
influence of Auntie Sue herself. Should he push out again into the
stream to face the danger he knew beset such a course? or should he wait
for a season in the secure calm of the harbor she offered until he were
stronger? Brian Kent knew, instinctively, that there was in the wisdom
and love of Auntie Sue's philosophy and faith a strength that would, if