"
"All right," he said; "but you had me worried for a minute."
Auntie Sue might have answered that she was somewhat worried herself;
but, instead, she plunged with desperate courage: "I came to see you
about Brian Kent, Homer."
It is not enough to say that the President of the Empire Consolidated
Savings Bank was astonished. "Brian Kent?" he said at last. "Why, Auntie
Sue, I wrote you nearly a year ago that Brian Kent was dead."
"Yes, I know; but he was not--that is, he is not. But the Brian Kent
your detectives were hunting was--I mean--is."
Homer T. Ward looked at his old teacher as though he feared she had
suddenly lost her mind.
"It is like this, Homer," Auntie Sue explained: "A few days after
your detective, Mr. Ross, called on me, this stranger appeared in the
neighborhood. No one dreamed that he was Brian Kent, because, you see,
he was not a bit like the description."
"Full beard, I suppose?" commented the banker, grimly.
"Yes: and every other way," continued Auntie Sue. "And he has been
working so hard all winter; and everybody in the country respects and
loves him so; and he is one of the best and truest men I ever knew;
and he is planning and working to pay back every cent he took; and I
cannot--I will not--let you send him to prison now."
The lovely old eyes were fixed on the banker's face with sweet anxiety.
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