cypress, and
looking like upright props to keep its great top spread.

I knew that in all probability there was more than one 'possum in the
great trees surrounding the opening, but Pomp was not there to find
them, and I had no dog. I felt, too, that in all probability more than
one bright pair of eyes were watching me from some bough, and their
owners' bushy tails twitching and whisking about; but I could see
nothing, and after a time, as a sudden thought struck me, I got down
softly, and looked round for a stick. This was soon found, for whenever
I cut one I generally left it thrust in somewhere among the dense
growth.

Thus armed, I went cautiously across the clearing toward the farther
side, where the gravelly bank was crowned by a tuft of pines, beneath
which, in the full sunshine, the ground was almost bare, and dotted with
stones, ashy, and dark, and dull, and grey.

I had committed more than one murder there, but they were murders in
which I exulted, for they meant death to the horrible rattlesnake or
deadly moccasin, as they lay sunning their cold blood in the hot rays,
ready to deal death to the passer-by, whose inadvertent foot should
disturb their sleep.

I went very cautiously, with my eyes scanning the spot eagerly, for at
very little distance the reptiles would be invisible from the way in
which their scales assimilated with the earth. But, though I used every
caution, I saw no wavy or coiled up serpent asleep, nor caught sight of
a tail rapidly following its owner in amongst the stunted herbage and
stones.

"Getting scarcer," I said to myself, as I turned off again, and made for
a faint track between the trees--a seldom-used path, leading on to the
edge of the swamp that bordered the little river running down to the
great tidal stream, which came from far away to the north-west among the
mountains.

For a time, as I went on peering here and there, I forgot all about my
first intention, but it came back strongly as I reached a natural
opening, and once more passed out of the shade, which seemed streaked
with threads of silver where the sun-rays darted through, and stood
looking down at the broad, glistening, shallow pool, where we boys had
often bathed.

The place looked beautiful as ever; the water wonderfully clear. Small
fish darted away at my approach, and took refuge in the reeds and grass
at the side, or in the broad patch of water-growth in one corner some
twenty yards across.

The