oticed
again and again the lean, muscular body of a tree squirrel, heard upon
a wooded slope the snapping and crashing of brush that told of the
leaping flight of a deer. The woods were alive with animal folk, her
"friends" called to her from every tree and tiny valley, they peeped
out at her from burrows and hollow trees.

"We are going to quit being a little fool," she told Gypsy with
tremulous emphasis. "And we are going to get a real picture to-day."

A day or so before she had heard with scant attention and no subsequent
interest something which in the old careless, love free days sooner
would have sent her riding this way in haste. One of her father's men,
Charley or Jim, had found a dead cow under the cliffs and had seen
signs of bear. He had returned to the spot later and had killed the
animal, a she bear, and had seen one of her cubs making its swift,
awkward way into the brush. Recollecting the story, and because to-day
she yearned feverishly for something to do, Wanda turned Gypsy toward
the cliffs, thinking how she should like, if her fortune were very
great, to be able to show Wayne Shandon when he did come to her, the
picture of a bear cub playing in the woods.

"I've had so much fun hunting for him!" she would say then. And Wayne
would never know how unmaidenly she had been.

Before she had come within a thousand yards of the place where the
carcass of the cow was lying she slipped from the saddle and picketed
Gypsy. Her lunch she left tied to the saddle strings; camera and field
glasses went with her.

Already, in the fast advancing summertime, she had donned her hunting
costume. The soft green of blouse and short skirt, of cap and
stockings, blended with the many tints of green of the copses and
groves and meadows through which she went swiftly and silently. She
slipped from tree to tree, making no more sound than the chipmunk
scampering almost from under her feet. Her eyes brightened, the colour
warmed in her cheek, her heart grew eager. For, sure enough, fortune
was good to her; there were two little bear cubs, round and fat and
playful, rumpling each other where they rolled in the sunlight in a
small grassy open space.

They were a hundred yards away when she saw them, too far for a
picture; but as soon as her eyes fell upon them she vowed that she must
have a picture. There was little breeze this morning in the quiet
woods, but that little blew from where she stood straight toward