e the last verse came she
began to join in as best she could.

"I'll bring thee a heart with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more,"

the words ended. Nobody who heard it that summer night in the starlight
by the river shore would ever forget the old song.

"You must have influenced Seth's choice of music," Betty's father said
to Aunt Barbara, who confessed that the droning of the violin over cheap
music was more than she could bear at first, and she had been compelled
to suggest something in the place of "The Sweet By-and-By" and "Golden
Slippers." Luckily, Seth seemed to abandon these without regret.

At last the boats all disappeared into the darkness, and the little camp
was made ready for night. The open air made every one sleepy but Miss
Barbara, who consoled herself by thinking that if she did not sleep it
would be little matter; she had been awake many a night in her life and
felt none the worse. But in fact the sound of rippling water against the
bank and the sea-like sound of the pine boughs overhead sent her to
sleep before she had half time to properly enjoy them. She and Betty
declared that their thick-set evergreen boughs and warm blankets made
the best of beds. They could see the stars through the open end of the
tent. One was so bright that it let fall a slender golden track of light
on the river. Mary Beck thought that she had never been so happy.
Camping-out had always been such a far-off thing, and belonged to summer
tourists and the remote unsettled parts of country; but here she was,
close to her own home, with all the delights of gypsy life suddenly made
her own. Betty and Betty's friends had such a way of enjoying every-day
things. Becky was learning to be happy in simple ways she never had
before. She went to sleep too, and the stars shone on, and late in the
night the waning moon came up, strange and red; then the dawn came
creeping into the morning sky, and one wild creature after another, in
the crevices of rocks or branches of trees, waked and went its ways
silently or gay with song.

When Betty's eyes first opened she could not remember where she was, for
a moment. Then she was filled with a sense of great contentment, and lay
still, looking out through the open end of the tent across the wide
still river down which some birds were flying seaward. It was most
beautiful in that early morning of a new day, and from beyond the water
on the op