e dawning and
budding life of the young in the real "home life" before the new
fledgling or tiny furred body left the nest for an independent life and
a future nest of its own. The wild mates at work upon the house which
instinct prompted was to be of use soon, the construction of a swinging
pocket hung high up by an oriole, this was a part of the home life,
just as essential a part of it as the covering of the eggs, the feeding
of the young.

Before the year had swelled and blossomed into full mid-summer she had
a pupil. It was her mother. Mother and daughter had always been more
to each other than the terms commonly imply, very nearly all that they
should connote. They had been friends. Here where the solitudes were
mighty and vast, where long miles and hard trails lay between homes and
where women were few, they had had but themselves to turn to when need
or desire came for the company of their own sex. Mrs. Leland had
remained young, in part because hers was a happy, sunny nature, in part
because she had had the fires of youth replenished from the
superabundant glow of girlhood in her daughter.

But now that the summer came with monotony and silence, now that Arthur
Shandon came no more, that Wayne seemed to have forgotten the range
country, that Garth Conway was busy every day with the entire
management of a heavily stocked cattle outfit, there were long, quiet
days at the Echo Creek.

"Wanda," Mrs. Leland said one day, a little wistfully. "Can't I come
with you and take a peep first hand into the homes of your wild
friends? I'll be very still, I'll stay with Shep and Gypsy if you want
me to."

Wanda, at once contrite and happy, was filled with apologies and
explanations. She had had no thought that her mother would find an
interest in her "play." But if she would come, if she would like to
come, oh, she would show her the most wonderful discovery. . . .

So mother and daughter rode out together that day with lunch and
camera, and that night worked together in Wanda's attic studio over a
highly satisfactory film. The older woman's interest became as steady,
as enthusiastic in a deeply thoughtful way, as Wanda's. She learned to
love each day's adventure as warmly as did her daughter, she came to
have the same tender joy in the unexpected discovery of some new phase
of the home life of the wild.

"In all of your hunting you are missing something, my White Huntress,"
she said one day. "Something w