She slipped stealthily from her bed and, trembling with excitement, ran silently down the long, bare hall to her brothers' room. It was a big chamber above the dining-room. Its only furniture was two beds; a big old four-poster, where John and Malcolm slept on a lumpy straw mattress, and a low "bunk" or box-like structure on casters, where the little boys, Archie and Jamie, lay tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. The green paper blinds were partly raised, and she could discern through the gloom John's black head on the bolster beside Malcolm's fair one. The black head was hanging half out of bed and its mouth was wide open. Elizabeth giggled softly. She longed to stuff something into that yawning cavity; but she knew that dire consequences followed upon tampering with John. She tiptoed back to her room. The excitement was lulled and she was beginning to feel sleepy. But she suddenly bethought herself that it would be wise to look out and see if Charles Stuart were coming. She remembered with hot indignation how once John had tied a string to his toe, which he let hang out of the window, and how Charles Stuart had come in the gray dawn and pulled the string, and the two had fled away in the dusk, while she slept all unawares. If they had any such plan on foot this time, she would be even with them. She would sit at the window and watch for Charles Stuart. She tiptoed gleefully across the room, and, slipping between the green paper blind and the sash, shoved her head and shoulders out of the open window. And then her mischievous mood fell from her like a garment, and there stole over her a feeling of awe. Elizabeth had often beheld the sunrise, and, being a passionate lover of nature, her soul had arisen with the day, radiant and full of joy. But never before had she witnessed the first mysterious birth of the dawn, and the wonder of it held her still. It was so strange and unreal. It was surely night, for the stars still hung above the black treetops, and yet it must be day, for above, below, on every side one great unbroken voice of song was pouring forth from the darkness. Or was it dark? It certainly wasn't light. The swamp, away behind old Wully Johnstone's fields, lay in blackness, and there was even a hint of moonlight sifted faintly through the gray veil of the sky. But the white line of birches by the stream stood out a soft, cloudy white, the fields were dimly distinguishable, and here and there a tree had taken form from its dark background.