--and saw also a tragedy afoot.

The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he
did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself
in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralyzed.

The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his
angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing-rod
she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at the
head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure,
and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground beside the
man.

He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed,
stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonized dismay gave way to such
an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim
about to be given to the fire or to the knife that flays. The place of
dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world of
peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at his
elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering in his ear. He
had been down in the abysses of life.

He glanced again at the girl, and realized what she had done: she had
saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question; but
he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him had
shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He staggered
to his feet.

"Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the
ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in his
youth he had been vain and ambitious, and good-looking also.

He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one
who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the
first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood
was not a real world.

She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:

"I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a gesture. "I
had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on you--then." She
glanced at the snake significantly.

"You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still spoke