The pachydermic Butch, fully dressed--and awake, raging in his wrath like
an active volcano, glanced at his watch, and discovered that it was exactly
five A.M.! Intensely pacified by this knowledge, he lumbered toward the
bunkhouse door and flung it open, determined to crush the pestersome youth
who thus unfeelingly disturbed the quietude of Camp Bannister at such an
unearthly hour! However, his grim purpose was temporarily thwarted--before
him spread a beautiful panorama, a vast canvas painted in rich hues and
colors, that indescribably charming masterpiece of nature, entitled dawn.

Butch, gazing from the bunkhouse doorway toward the pebbly shore of the
placid lake stretching out for two miles before him, beheld Old Sol,
blood-red, peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off, opposite strand
of Lake Conowingo; the luminous orb laid a flaming pathway across the
shimmering waters, and golden bars of light, like gleaming fingers
outstretched, fell athwart the tall pines that towered on the high bluff
back of the camp. The glorious sunshine, succeeding a flood of rosy color,
inundated the scene; it bathed in a gorgeous radiance the early autumn
woods, it illumined the bunkhouse, and another rude shanty known to the
squad as the grub-shack, it poured down on old Hinky-Dink, the ancient
negro cookee, setting the breakfast tables just outside the canvas
cook-tent.

"Deed, cross mah heart, Mistah Butch," grinned old Hinky-Dink, seeing, as
a motion picture director would express it, "Wrath registered on the
countenance" of Butch Brewster, "Ah done tole dat young Hicks dat a bird
what cain't sing an' will sing mus' be made not to sing! Ah done info'med
him dat yo'-all was layin' fo' him, cause he done bus' up yo' sleep!"

A jay bird, a flashing bit of vivid blue, shot from a tall pine, jeering
shrilly at Butch; out on the lake, a trout leaped above the water for an