st her own? Then she
remembered that the beauty which the Camp Fire taught was not only a
physical beauty, but the greater kind which is of the spirit as well as
of the flesh.

"Give Service?" Well, perhaps some day in ways she could not now
imagine, she might be able to return a small measure of the service
that her friends had been so generously bestowing upon her.

"Pursue Knowledge, Be Trustworthy." No misfortune need separate a girl
from these ideals.

"Hold on to Health." This might mean a harder fight than she had ever
yet had to make before, but Betty felt a new courage faintly struggling
within her.

"Glorify Work." That was not an impossible demand of her as a Torch
Bearer among her group of Camp Fire girls. It was the last of the
seven points of their great law that she dreaded to face at this
moment, here in the darkness alone.

"Be Happy." Could she ever again be happy even for a day or an hour?
And yet the law said: "If we have pain, to hide it, if others have
sorrow, be quick to relieve it."

But what the rest of the law read she could not now recall. For Herr
Crippen was beginning to play one of the most exquisite pieces of music
that can ever be rendered on the violin, Schubert's Serenade.

"Last night the nightingale woke me,
Last night when all was still
It sang in the golden moonlight"

Betty wondered why the music should sound so strangely far away, as
though she were dreaming and it were coming to her somewhere out of the
land of dreams.

Another moment and Betty was sound asleep. Nevertheless the Professor,
with his eyes still upon her, played softly on, played until Mrs.
Ashton noiselessly entered the room.

Then he ceased and the man and woman, standing one on either side of
Betty's bed, looked at each other with expressions it would be
difficult to translate. For each face held a certain amount of
pleading and of defiance.

"She is like her mother; _nicht wahr_?" the Professor murmured, and
then withdrew.

Afterwards for several moments Mrs. Ashton's eyes never ceased
regarding the curls of Betty's red brown hair, that lay outside on her
pillow. Her long braids had been cut off and latterly she had been
wearing a little blue silk cap, which had now slipped off on account of
her restlessness.

Mrs. Ashton, glancing in a mirror at her own faded flaxen hair, sighed.
Then, seating herself in a chair near by she waited in absolute
patience and quietness, until