nder
Ponemah to a height of two or three feet. Sahwah, whose insatiable
curiosity as usual got the better of her fears, climbed a tree quite
close to Ponemah and peered down through the branches, all agog with
desire to see the dread serpent show itself.

"Come down from there--quick!" called someone in a nervously shaking
voice. "Don't you know that snakes climb trees?"

"Nonsense," retorted Sahwah. "Whoever heard of a snake climbing a tree?"

An argument started below, several voices upholding each side, some
maintaining emphatically that snakes did climb trees; others holding out
quite as determinedly that they didn't.

"Anyway, _this_ one might," concluded the one who had started the
argument, in a triumphant tone.

"What are we going to do?" someone asked Miss Judy.

"I'll get father to come and shoot it," replied Miss Judy.

Just then there came an excited shriek from Sahwah. "It's coming out! I
see the bushes moving."

The girls scattered in all directions; Miss Peckham, up on her rock,
covered her ears with her hands, as though there was going to be an
explosion.

"Here it comes!"

Sahwah, leaning low over her branch, nearly fell out of the tree in her
excitement, as her eye caught the gleam of red and black among the
bushes. Miss Judy scrambled up on the rock beside Miss Peckham.

There was a violent agitation of the ferns and bushes underneath
Ponemah, a sort of scrambling movement, accompanied by a muffled
squeaking, and then a truly remarkable creature bounced into view--a
creature whose body consisted of a long stocking, red and black in
alternate stripes, in the toe of which some live animal frantically
squeaked and struggled, leaping almost a foot from the ground in its
efforts to escape from its prison, and dragging the gaudy striped length
behind it through a series of thrillingly lifelike wriggles.

"Hi!" called Sahwah with a great shout of laughter. "It's nothing but a
stocking with something in it."

In reaction from her former alarm Miss Judy laughed until she fell off
the rock, and sat helplessly on the ground watching the frantic
struggles of the creature in the stocking to free itself. Hearing the
laughter, those who had fled at the first alarm came hastening back, and
all promptly went into hysterics when they saw the stocking writhing on
the ground, and all were equally as helpless as Miss Judy and Sahwah.

"Only Tiny Armstrong's stocking!" gasped Miss Judy, wiping away her
te