uncoiled and
tried to run; he twisted and turned in his dying agony and lashed the
air in futile fury. The merciless rod broke him and stretched him to
his full length. But even though dead he was terrible to me, for had I
not heard that a snake never dies until sunset; could I not see the
body still quivering; might not the bruised head dart at me in dying
madness!

I took a step backward, and hurtled into the water. For a long time I
groped in the depths of the pool. To me it seemed that I struggled
there for hours in the blackness; that serpents drew their slimy
lengths across my face; that fishes poked their noses with bold
inquisitiveness about me and dared to nibble at my hands; that Mr.
Pound looked up at me from the abyss, benignly in his triumph, and that
his solemn voice joined with the roaring of the torrent. Knowing well
that my end had come and that the prophecy was being fulfilled, I
struggled without hope, but my fingers clutching at the water at last
met some solid substance and closed on it. I felt myself turn, and
suddenly opening my eyes saw the sunlight pouring through the green
window in the tree-tops. My legs straightened; my feet touched the
stony bottom; my shoulders lifted from the stream, and I looked into a
small girl's face, while my hand was tightly clasped in hers.

Since that day the sun's soft brown has faded from her cheeks,
uncovering their radiance; since then she has grown to fairest
womanhood, and I have seen her adorning the art of Paris and Vienna;
but to me she has given no fairer picture than on that May morning
when, shamefaced, I climbed from the mountain stream and looked down
from my ten years of height on the little girl in a patched blue frock.
Nature had coiffed her hair that day and tumbled it over her shoulders
in wanton brightness, but she had caught the crowning wisp of it in a
faded blue ribbon which bobbed majestically with every movement of her
head. Had some woodland Mr. Pound told her that I was coming? Since
then I have seen her more daintily shod than when her bare brown legs
hurried from view into broken shoes of twice her size. Since then the
hard little hand has turned white and thin and tapering, to such a hand
as women are wont to let dawdle over the arms of chairs. Then I was a
boy, with a boy's haughty way of regarding girlish softness. I was
haughtier that day because I sought in my pride to cover up my debt to
her. Now I am a man, but th