“Isn’t there anyone else at all up here, Miss Eleanor?  I should think there’d be a hotel or something like that here.”

“No, not yet; not right near here.  This lake is part of a big preserve that is owned by a lot of men in the city.  My father is one of them, and they have tried to keep all this part of the woods just as nature left it.  There are a lot of deer here, and in the fall, when hunters come into the woods, they have to keep out of this part of them.  A few deer are shot here, because if only a few are taken each year, it’s all right.  But there will be no hotels in this tract.  Hotels mean the end of the real woods life.  There are half a dozen lakes in the preserve, and each of the families that owns a share in it has a camp at one of the lakes.  I mean a regular camp, with wooden buildings, where one can stay in the winter, even.  But this lake was set apart for trips like this, where people can get right back to nature, and sleep in tents.”

“Then we can go over and see some of the other lakes?”

“Yes; I don’t know whether we’ll find anyone at home in any of the camps or not, but they’ll be glad to see us if they are there.  A lot of people wait until later in the year to come up here—­until the hunting season begins.  But we can do some hunting even now, though it’s against the law to do any shooting.”

“Oh, I know what you mean, Miss Eleanor—­with a camera?”

It was Margery Burton who thought of that.

“Yes.  And that’s really the best sort of hunting, I think.  If you’ve ever seen a deer, and had it look at you with its big, soft eyes, I don’t see how you can kill it.  It’s almost as hard to get a good picture of e deer as it is to kill it—­in fact, I think it’s harder, because you have to get so much closer to it And it’s awfully good fun at night.

“You go to one of their runways, and settle down with your camera and a flashlight powder, and then when the deer comes, if you’re very quick, you can get a really beautiful picture.  The deer may be a little frightened, but he isn’t hurt, and you have a picture that you can keep for years and show to people.  And an experienced hunter will tell you that any time you can get close enough to a deer to get a good flashlight picture of him you could easily have killed him.”

“Why is it so very hard to do that?”

“Well, for lots of reasons.  You have to figure on the wind—­because if the wind is blowing away from you and toward the deer he can smell you long before he’s in sight, and off he goes, afraid to come any nearer.”

“But how can you tell where a deer will be?”

“They have regular runways—­just as we have trails.  And at night they come down to the lake to drink.  So you can station yourself on one of those runways, and be pretty sure that sooner or later a deer will come along.”