"I feel quite sure, Caroline," Aunt Victoria said solemnly, "that if you take a candle, and go upstairs this minute, you will find that child wide awake." Mrs. Caldwell felt that she was being found fault with, and was indignant. She went upstairs at once, with her head held high, expecting to find Beth in a healthy sleep. The relief, however, of finding that the child was well, would not have been so great at the moment as the satisfaction of proving Aunt Victoria in the wrong. But Beth was wide awake, petitioning God in an agony to spare her friends. When Mrs. Caldwell entered she started up. "O mamma!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you've come; I've been so frightened about you." "What is the matter with you, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, not over-gently. "What are you frightened about?" "Nothing," Beth faltered, shrinking back into herself. "Oh, that's nonsense," her mother answered. "It's silly to be frightened at nothing, and cowardly to be frightened at all. Lie down and go to sleep, like a good child. Come, turn your face to the wall, and I'll tuck you in." Beth obeyed, and her mother left her to her fears, and returned to Aunt Victoria in the drawing-room. "Well?" Aunt Victoria asked anxiously. "She was awake," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged. "She said she was frightened, but didn't know what of. I expect she'd been dreaming. And I'm sure there is nothing the matter with her. She's been subject to queer fits of alarm at night ever since she was a baby. It's the dark, I think. It makes her nervous. At one time the doctor made us have a night-light for her, which was great nonsense, _I_ always said; but her father insisted. When it suits her to play in the dark, she's never afraid." It was at this time that Rainharbour set up a band of its own. Beth was always peculiarly susceptible to music. Her ear was defective; she rarely knew if any one sang flat; but the poorest instrument would lay hold of her, and set high chords of emotion vibrating, beyond the reach of words. The first time she heard the band, she was completely carried away. It was on the pier, and she happened to be close beside it when it began to play, and stood still in astonishment at the crash of the opening bars. Her mother, after vainly calling to her to come on, snatched impatiently at her arm to drag her away; and Beth, in her excitement, set her teeth and slapped at her mother's hand--or rather at what seemed to her the importunate thing that was trying to end her ecstasy. Of course Mrs. Caldwell would not stand that, so Beth, victim of brute force, was hustled off to the end of the pier, and then slapped, shaken, and reviled, for the enormity of her offence, until, in an acute nervous crisis, she wrenched herself out of her mother's clutches, and sprang over into the harbour. It was high-water happily, and Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, who was just going out in his yacht, saw her drop, and fished her out with a boat-hook.