took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the "Account of
Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested that a strong
tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the
Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it, and that the
Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false
show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a
Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not
being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,
though there was good Reason to think it was a Damon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this town
early in the present century. After this there was a great snake-hunt,
in which very many of these venomous beasts were killed,--one in
particular, said to have been as big round as a stout man's arm, and to
have had no less than forty joints to his rattle,--indicating, according
to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put any faith in
the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty human beings,--an idle
fancy, clearly. This hunt, however, had no permanent effect in keeping
down the serpent population. Viviparous, creatures are a kind of
specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were,
for a future brood,--an egg being, so to speak, a promise to pay a young
one by and by, if nothing happen. Now the domestic habits of the
rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for obvious reasons; but it is,
no doubt, to all intents and purposes oviparous. Consequently it has
large families, and is not easy to kill out.

In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of
Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.
A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by
the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a
rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the
almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove
immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she
was bitten.

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,
as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively
careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of inter