The Re-Creation of Brian Kent | Page 9

bank and so was carried well
out from the shore. As the boat lost its momentum, the strong current
caught it and whirled it away down the river.
Groping in the darkness, the man found his bottle of whisky, and
working the cork out with his pocketknife, drank long and deep.
Already, save for a single light, the town was lost in the night. As the
man watched that red spot on the black wall, the stream swung his
drifting boat around a bend, and the light vanished. The dreadful
mystery of the river drew close. The world of men was far, very far
away. Centuries ago, the man had faced himself in the mirror, and had
obeyed the voice that summoned him into the darkness. In fancy, now,
he saw his empty boat swept on and on. Through what varied scenes
would it drift? To what port would the mysterious will of the river
carry it? To what end would it at last come in its helplessness?

And the man himself,--the human soul-craft,--what of him? As he had
pushed his material boat out into the stream to drift, unguided and
helpless, so, presently, he would push himself out from the shore of all
that men call life. Through what scenes would he drift? To what port
would the will of an awful invisible stream carry him? To what end
would he finally come, in his helplessness?
Again the man drank--and again.
And then, with face upturned to the leaden clouds, he laughed
aloud--laughed until the ghostly shores gave back his laughter, and the
voices of the night were hushed and still.
The laughter ended with a wild, reckless, defiant yell.
Springing to his feet in the drifting boat, the man shook his clenched
fist at the darkness, and with insane fury cursed the life he had left
behind.
The current whirled the boat around, and the man faced down the
stream. He laughed again; and, lifting his bottle high, uttered a reckless,
profane toast to the unknown toward which he was being carried by the
river in the night.
CHAPTER III.
A MISSING LETTER.
Auntie Sue's little log house by the river was placed some five hundred
yards back from the stream, on a bench of land at the foot of
Schoolhouse Hill. From this bench, the ground slopes gently to the
river-bank, which, at this point, is sheer and high enough to be well
above the water at flood periods. The road, winding down the hill, turns
to the right at the foot of the steep grade, and leads away up the river;
and between the road and the river, on the up-stream side of the house,
was the garden.
At the lower corner of the garden, farthest from the house, the strong

current had cut a deep inward curve in the high shore-line, forming thus
an eddy, which was margined on one side, at a normal stage of water,
by a narrow shelf of land between the water's edge and the foot of the
main bank. A flight of rude steps led down from the garden above to
this natural landing, which, for three miles up and down the river, was
the only point, on Auntie Sue's side of the stream, where one could go
ashore from a skiff.
From the porch of the house, one, facing up the river, looked over the
gently sloping garden, over the eddy lying under the high bank, and
away over a beautiful reach of water known as The Bend,--a wide,
sweeping curve which, a mile distant, is lost behind a wooded bluff
where, at times, during the vacation or hunting season, one might see
the smoke from the stone chimney of a clubhouse which was built and
used by people who lived in the big, noisy city many miles from the
peaceful Ozark scene. From the shore of The Bend, opposite and above
Auntie Sue's place, beyond the willows that fringe the water's edge, the
low bottom-lands extend back three- quarters of a mile to the foot of a
heavily timbered ridge, beyond which rise the higher hills. But directly
across from Auntie Sue's house, this ridge curves sharply toward the
stream; while less than a quarter of a mile below, a mighty
mountain-arm is thrust out from a shoulder of Schoolhouse Hill, as if to
bar the river's way. The high bluff thus formed is known to the natives
throughout all that region as Elbow Rock.
The quiet waters of The Bend move so gently on their broad course that
from the porch, looking up the stream, the eye could scarcely mark the
current. But in front of the little log house, where the restraining banks
of the river draw closer together, the lazy current awakens to
quickening movement. Looking down