“Sounds steady and reliable,” commented Brian. “But will she come?” “Yes, indeed, she will, and be tickled to death over the job,” returned Auntie Sue. “I'll write her at once.” While Auntie Sue was preparing to write her letter, Judy muttered, in a tone which only Brian heard: “Just the same, 'tain't no name for a common gal ter have; hit sure ain't. There's somethin' dad burned queer 'bout hit somewhere.” “Nonsense! Judy,” said Brian in a low voice; “don't worry Auntie Sue.” “I ain't aimin' ter worry her none,” returned the mountain girl; “but I'll bet you-all a pretty that this here gal'll worry both of youuns 'fore you are through with her;--me, too, I reckon.” For some reason, Auntie Sue's letter to Betty Jo seemed to be rather long. In fact, she spent the entire evening at it; which led Judy to remark that “hit sure looked like Auntie Sue was aimin' ter write a book herself.” A neighbor who went to Thompsonville the following day with a load of hogs for shipment, posted the letter. And, in due time, another neighbor brought the answer. Betty Jo would come. It was the day following the evening when Brian wrote the last page of his book that another letter came to Auntie Sue,--a letter which, for the second time, very nearly wrecked Brian Kent's world. CHAPTER XIII. JUDY TO THE RESCUE. Brian was working in the garden. It was early in the afternoon, and the man, as he worked in the freshly ploughed ground, was rejoicing at the completion of his book. Straightening up from his labor, he drew a deep breath of the fragrant air. About him on every side, and far away into the blue distance, the world was dressed in the gala dress of the season. The river, which at the breaking of the winter had been a yellow flood that washed the top of the bank in front of the house and covered the bottom-lands on the opposite side, was again its normal self, and its voice to him, now, was a singing voice of triumphal gladness. For Brian, too, the world was new, and fresh, and beautiful. The world of his winter was gone. He had found himself in his work, and in the glorious consciousness of the fact he felt like shouting with sheer joy of living. “And Auntie Sue, dear Auntie Sue,” he thought, looking with love in his eyes toward the house, how wonderful she had been in her helpful understanding and never-failing faith in him. After all, it was Auntie Sue's triumph more than it was his. His happy musing was interrupted by a neighbor who, on his way home from Thompsonville, stopped at the garden fence with the letter for Auntie Sue. Brian took the letter with a jest which brought a roar of laughter from the mountaineer, and, when the latter had gone on his way up the hill, started toward the house to find Auntie Sue.