oes in her hand, softly descended the stairs.

"Betty, Betty," her mother spoke in a sleepy voice from her own room
as the child crept past her door; "why, my dear, it isn't time to get
up yet. We shan't start for hours."

"I heard Peter Junior say they were going to strike camp at daybreak,
and I want to see them strike it. You don't need to get up. I can go
over there alone."

"Why, no, child! Mother couldn't let you do that. They don't want
little girls there. Go back to bed, dear. Did you wake Martha?"

"Oh, mother. Can't I go downstairs? I don't want to go to bed again.
I'll be very still."

"Will you lie on the lounge and try to go to sleep again?"

"Yes, mother."

Mary Ballard turned with a sigh and presently fell asleep, and Betty
softly continued her way and obediently lay down in the darkened room
below; but sleep she could not. At last, having satisfied her
conscience by lying quietly for a while, she stole to the open door,
for in that peaceful spot the Ballards slept with doors and windows
wide open all through the warm nights. Oh, but the world was cool and
mysterious, and the air was sweet! Little rustling noises made her
feel as if strange beings were stirring; above her head were soft
chirpings, and somewhere a bird was calling an undulating, long-drawn
note, low and sweet, like a tone drawn from her father's violin.

Betty sat on the edge of the porch and put on her shoes, and then
walked down the path to the gate. The white peonies and the iris
flowers were long since gone, and on the Harvest apple trees and the
Sweet Boughs the fruit hung ripening. All Betty's life long she never
forgot this wonderful moment of the breaking of day. She listened for
sounds to come to her from the camp far away on the river bluff, but
none were heard, only the restless moving of her grandfather's team
taking their early feed in the small pasture lot near by.

How fresh everything smelled! And the sky! Surely it must be like
this in heaven! It must be heaven showing through, while the world
slept. She was glad she had awakened early so she might see it,--she
and God and the angels, and all the wild things of earth.

Slowly everything around her grew plainer, and long rays of color,
faintly pink, streamed up into the sky from the eastern horizon; then
suddenly some pale gray, floating clouds above her head blossomed into
a wonderful rose laid upon a sea of gold, then gradually turned
shell-pink, then faded th