iffs another fifty feet above.
There was a quantity of fine sandy soil at the lower end of the narrow
cut and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slight
difficulty in seeing the signs of little bruin's headlong flight. As
he scurried upward he had left the marks of his toes in long
unmistakable scratches.

"I wonder," thought the girl with a little thrill at what her fancy
pictured for her, "if any of the rest of the family are at home?"

The mother bear had been killed; one cub was dead; the second had fled
to the cliff tops. Here, where bears were growing scarcer every year,
there was little danger of her meeting the _pater familias_. And yet--

"If I should meet a bear in there," she laughed to herself, "I wonder
who'd be scared most?"

She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its
case, focused it upon the yawning, black mouth of the cavern and waited
a patient quarter of an hour, noiseless and listening and ready. For
she was familiar enough with the California brown bear to know that he
will not attack when the way of retreat is clear; that while, after he
gets into a fight he extracts a great deal of delight from it, still if
given his choice he would rather run and keep on moving until he had
covered anywhere from ten to sixty miles.

[Illustration: She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her
camera from its case, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.]

When nothing but silence answered her, she leaned out on the limb and
tossed her hat into the mouth of the cave. After it she threw some big
pieces of bark, making them land well inside with no little noise. As
there was still no sound she waited no longer.

The branch out upon which she edged her slow way was both sturdy in
itself and made doubly safe by the fact that it lay across the ledge,
reaching with its tips to the rock wall at the side of the natural
door. In a moment she had scrambled across, had leaped to her feet and
was peering into the vast, shadowy interior.

There are few of us for whom a cave does not have a rare attraction, an
appeal little short of fascinating, that has in it something of romance
perhaps, certainly something of mystery and a dim, vague stirring of
primitive and vital feelings, a shadowy harking back to the early life
history of mankind. To Wanda Leland, in so many essentials a child of
the wild, such a cavern as this was a bit of wonderland. Her swift
runni