Three years had changed Elnora from the girl of sixteen to the very verge of womanhood.  She had grown tall, round, and her face had the loveliness of perfect complexion, beautiful eyes and hair and an added touch from within that might have been called comprehension.  It was a compound of self-reliance, hard knocks, heart hunger, unceasing work, and generosity.  There was no form of suffering with which the girl could not sympathize, no work she was afraid to attempt, no subject she had investigated she did not understand.  These things combined to produce a breadth and depth of character altogether unusual.  She was so absorbed in her classes and her music that she had not been able to gather many specimens.  When she realized this and hunted assiduously, she soon found that changing natural conditions had affected such work.  Men all around were clearing available land.  The trees fell wherever corn would grow.  The swamp was broken by several gravel roads, dotted in places around the edge with little frame houses, and the machinery of oil wells; one especially low place around the region of Freckles’s room was nearly all that remained of the original.  Wherever the trees fell the moisture dried, the creeks ceased to flow, the river ran low, and at times the bed was dry.  With unbroken sweep the winds of the west came, gathering force with every mile and howled and raved; threatening to tear the shingles from the roof, blowing the surface from the soil in clouds of fine dust and rapidly changing everything.  From coming in with two or three dozen rare moths in a day, in three years’ time Elnora had grown to be delighted with finding two or three.  Big pursy caterpillars could not be picked from their favourite bushes, when there were no bushes.  Dragonflies would not hover over dry places, and butterflies became scarce in proportion to the flowers, while no land yields over three crops of Indian relics.

All the time the expense of books, clothing and incidentals had continued.  Elnora added to her bank account whenever she could, and drew out when she was compelled, but she omitted the important feature of calling for a balance.  So, one early spring morning in the last quarter of the fourth year, she almost fainted when she learned that her funds were gone.  Commencement with its extra expense was coming, she had no money, and very few cocoons to open in June, which would be too late.  She had one collection for the Bird Woman complete to a pair of Imperialis moths, and that was her only asset.  On the day she added these big Yellow Emperors she had been promised a check for three hundred dollars, but she would not get it until these specimens were secured.  She remembered that she never had found an Emperor before June.