ld speak, Judy returned with excitement: "I know who
you-all be now. I ought ter knowed the minute I set eyes on you. You-all
are the gal with that there no-'count name, an' you've come ter work for
him, there,"--she pointed to Brian,--"a-helpin' him ter write his book,
what ain't his'n no more, nohow, 'cause he done throwed hit away,--plumb
inter the river."

"I am Miss Williams," returned the other. "My 'no-'count name,' I
suppose, is Betty Jo." She laughed kindly. "Perhaps it won't seem so
'no'count' when we are better acquainted, Judy. Won't you run along to
the house, and change to some dry clothes? You will catch your death of
cold if you stand here like this."

"How'd you-all know I was Judy?"

"Why, Auntie Sue wrote me about you, of course."

"An' you knowed me 'cause I'm so all crooked an' ugly, I reckon," came
the uncompromising return.

Betty Jo turned to Brian: "You are Mr. Burns, are you not, for whom I am
to work?"

Brian made no reply,--he really could not speak. "And this,"--Betty
Jo included Judy, the manuscript, and the river in a graceful
gesture,--"this, I suppose, is the result of what is called 'the
artistic temperament'?"

Still the man could find no words. The young woman's presence and her
reference to his work brought to him, with overwhelming vividness, the
memory of all to which he had so short a time before looked forward,
and which was now so hopelessly lost to him. He felt, too, a sense of
rebellion that she should have come at such a moment,--that she could
stand there with such calm self-possession and with such an air of
competency. Her confidence and poise in such contrast to the chaotic
turmoil of his own thoughts, and his utter helplessness in the situation
which had so suddenly burst upon him, filled him with unreasoning
resentment.

Betty Jo must have read in Brian Kent's face something of the suffering
that held him there dumb and motionless before her, and so sensed a
deeper tragedy than appeared on the surface of the incident; and her own
face and voice revealed her understanding as she said, with quiet,
but decisive, force: "Mr. Burns, Judy must go to the house. Won't you
persuade her?"

Brian started as one aroused from deep abstraction, and went to Judy;
while Betty Jo drew a little way apart, and stood looking out over the
river.

"Give me the manuscript, Judy," said Brian gently, "and go on to the
house."

"You-all ain't a-goin' ter sling hit inter the river