Flushed and panting the girl made her way upward until finally she caught with both hands the big lower limb. Field glasses and camera in their cases strapped to her belt in no way interfered with the free play of her muscles. She tested the branch a moment, smiled at herself for hesitating to trust her light weight to a thing which would have carried tons, gripped a firmer hold and swung free of the rocks. Here would have been a picture for her mother had she come with her this morning; the lithe graceful body swinging twenty feet high in air, only hard slab and broken boulder beneath her. Then she drew herself up as a boy does "chinning himself," threw a heel over the limb, and in a flash lay breathing deeply and triumphantly, the most difficult step of her climb achieved. Slowly, steadily she made her way upward. In the main it was simple enough for Wanda for it was the sort of thing she did over and over week in and week out. Once, already fifty feet from the ground, she did something that would have been simple enough under other circumstances and yet which put a quick flutter in her heart. It was something which would have made the heart grow still in the breast of Wayne Shandon had he seen, which would have brought a paralysing fear for her to a man who loved life for the gamble in it and who took his chances recklessly. She was perched fearlessly upon a sturdy horizontal limb, her body tight pressed against the trunk, her hands gripping at the roughened bark, steadying her as she balanced. A quick glance upward showed her a bare stretch of bole with the nearest limb on her side of the tree just barely beyond her reach. Slowly she straightened, lengthening her pliant body the imperceptible fraction of an inch, gradually thrusting her two arms up high above her head, still with her hands steadying her as they clung to the bark, her moccasined feet curving to the limb on which she stood. And now she could just touch with the tips of her fingers the broad branch above. Then she did the thing which would have been simple enough had she stood on the ground instead of balancing high in air; she measured the few inches in distance, she drew her fingers lingeringly from the bark, holding them still above her head, she tautened the muscles of her splendid young body to the work they were called upon to do, bent her knees little by little, and then fearless still but agitated, she leaped upward, and grasped the elusive branch. For a moment she swung there, secure now and confident, and then, as she had gained the first step in her climb so now she made this one. A slow tensing of biceps, a drawing up of the pendulous body, the quick flash of a heel thrown over the limb, and she lay upon it, laughing softly. It was good and glorious to be young, to have a body that obeyed one's will, to have a steady heart.