At last there would loom up through the green tangle a squat broken white pine. That was my landmark. I would push my way through a tangle of sanicle, and beyond the trunk of a slim elm catch a gleam of white in the dusk. There, all rose-red and snow-white, with parted lips, waited for me the queen flower of the woods, the _Cypripedium reginæ_, the loveliest of all our orchids. Two narrow, white, beautiful curved petals stretched out at right angles, while above them towered a white sepal, the three together making a snowy cross. Below this cross hung the lip of the flower, a milk-white hollow shell fully an inch across and an inch deep, veined with crystalline pink which deepened into purple, growing more intense in color until the veins massed in a network of vivid violet just under the curved lips kissed by many a wandering wood-bee. Inside the shell were spots of intense purple, showing through the transparent walls. The other two white sepals were joined together and hung as a single one behind the lip. [Illustration: PINK AND WHITE LADY SLIPPERS (_Cypripedium reginæ_)] I had first found this orchid while hunting for a veery's nest in the marsh. At that time nothing was showing except the leaves, which grow on tall, round, downy stems. They were beautifully curved at the margin, and were of a brilliant green, a little lighter on the under side than on the upper, and, at first sight, much like the leaves of the well-known marsh hellebore. That day was the beginning of a ten-year tryst which I kept every summer with this wood-queen. Then, alas, I lost her! It came about thus. The marsh in which she hid was part of a thousand acres owned by a friend of mine, who was an enthusiastic and rival flower-hunter. Each year, when I visited my colony of these queen orchids, I sent him one with my compliments and the assurance that the flower belonged to him because it was found on his land. I accompanied these gifts with various misleading messages as to where they grew. He would hunt and hunt, but find nothing but exasperation. Finally, he bribed me, with an apple-wood corner cupboard I had long coveted, to show him the place. It was not fifty yards from the road, and when I took him to it he was overcome with emotion. "I'll bet that I have tramped a hundred miles," he said plaintively, "through every spot on this farm except this one, looking for this flower. Nobody who knew anything about botany would ever think of looking here." The next year my wood-lady did not meet me, nor the next, and I strongly suspect that she has been transplanted to some secret spot known to my unscrupulous botanical friend alone. Moreover, he has never yet paid me that corner cupboard.