tters straight.

CHAPTER X.

BRIAN KENT DECIDES.

Brian had walked along the river-bank below the house to a spot just
above the point where the high bluff jutting out into the river-channel
forms Elbow Rock.

The bank here is not so high above the roaring waters of the rapids, for
the spur of the mountain which forms the cliff lies at a right angle to
the river, and the greater part of the cliff is thus on the shore, with
its height growing less and less as it merges into the main slope of
the mountain-side. From the turn in the road, in front of the house, a
footpath leads down the bank of the river to the cliff, and, climbing
stairlike up the face of the steep bluff, zigzags down the easier slope
of the down-river side, to come again into the road below. The
road itself, below Elbow Rock, is forced by the steep side of the
mountain-spur and the precipitous bluff to turn inland from the river,
and so, climbing by an easier grade up past Tom Warden's place, crosses
the ridge above the schoolhouse, and comes back down the mountain again
in front of Auntie Sue's place, to its general course along the stream.
The little path forms thus a convenient short cut for any one following
the river road on foot.

Brian, seated on the river-bank a little way from the path where it
starts up the bluff, was trying to decide whether it would be better
for him to follow his desire and stay with Auntie Sue for a few weeks
or months, or whether he should not, in spite of the land he might clear
for her, return to the world where he could more quickly earn the money
to pay back that which he had stolen.

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