through the orchard and across the meadow lands. The weapon with which
she hunted was a camera which she carried in its black case slung over
her shoulder or hanging from the horn of Gypsy's saddle.

Reared since babyhood in a land where men and women were few and where
the wild things of the forests were many and unafraid, she had long ago
come to look upon the little, bright eyed woodland folk as her
playmates. Many of her childhood sorrows and joys were linked with
their fates. Her first great grief had occurred when she was ten years
old and Jule, her brown bear cub,--named after the cook to whom he bore
in the child's eyes a marked resemblance, a slight and necessary
variation in the termination of the name taking care of the matter of a
difference in sex,--came to an untimely end through the instinctive and
merciless conduct of Shep's grandparents. The house was filled with
chipmunks who frightened Julia, to whom they were "jest rats, drat
'em," and who raided the kitchen systematically. A trained grey
squirrel barked from the trees above the house, and pet rabbits were
numerous and unprofitable about the vegetable garden. At the age when
little girls in the cities were dressing and undressing their dolls,
Wanda was taming a palpitating heart in some little fury [Transcriber's
note: furry?] breast or leaning breathlessly, like a small mother bird
herself, over a nest in the grass watching eagerly for the tender bills
to peck and chip their way out into the wonderful world.

It was but natural therefore that after her childhood had gone and she
had outgrown her passion for numberless pets overrunning the house just
as her sisters in the cities had outgrown their pleasure in dressing
and undressing dolls, she should become the "White Huntress." She
loved more than ever the wildness of the forest lands, and the ways of
the woodland things were wonderful and mysterious to her. And now,
from a new angle, they were her study.

There were days when she rode far out from the ranch house, her lunch
at her saddle strings, to be gone until dusk or after the stars came
out. She would leave Gypsy tethered where the grass was deep and rich,
command Shep to lie down and see that nobody ran away with her outfit,
and then tramp off alone, carrying her camera. She knew how to climb
up into the tree and to screen herself behind the foliage, so that she
might watch the mother bird and her ways, and find out when she shou