Every year when Harvard's learned halls are closed for the long summer
vacation,--sometimes at other seasons too,--he starts off on a trip to a
wilderness region, with his knapsack on his back, his rifle on his
shoulder, and often carrying his camera as well.

Once in a while he has been accompanied by a bosom friend or two. More
frequently he has gone alone, hiring the services of a professional
guide accustomed to the locality he visits. Now, such a guide is the
indispensable figure in every woodland trip. He is expected to supply
the main part of his employer's camp "kit"; namely, a tent or some
shelter to sleep under, cooking utensils, axes, etc., as well as a boat
or canoe if such be required. And this son of the forest, whose foot can
make a bee-line to its destination through the densest wooded maze, is
not only leader, but cook and general-utility man in camp as well. The
guide must be equally grand-master of paddle, rifle, and frying-pan.

For these tireless woodland heroes Cyrus Garst has a general
admiration. He has always agreed with them famously--save on one point;
and he has never had to shorten his wanderings for fear of lengthening
their fees. For Cyrus has a millionnaire father in the Back Bay of
Boston, who is disposed to indulge his whims.

The one point of variance is this: while all guides admire young Garst
as a crack shot with a rifle, he frequently dumfounds them by letting
slip stunning chances at game, big and little. They call him "a queer
specimen sportsman,"--understanding little his love for the wild
offspring of the woods,--because he never uses his gun save when the
bareness of his larder or the peril of his own life or his chum's
demands it.

Nevertheless, feeling the need of fresh meat, the naturalist was for the
moment hotly exasperated because his English comrade, Neal Farrar,
missed even a poor chance at a buck during the midnight excursion on
Squaw Pond.

His friends are proud of stating that up to the present Cyrus had
proceeded well in his friendly acquaintance with wild creatures, his
desire being to study their habits when alive rather than to pore over
their anatomy when dead. And he has always reaped a plentiful harvest
of fun during his trips, declaring that he has "the pull over fellows
who go into the woods for killing," seeing that he can thoroughly enjoy
the escape of a game animal if he can only catch a sight of it, and
perceive how its pluck or cunning enables i