t was as dim as a cave. He felt slowly in
every crevice, and a startled moth or two flew out. It was not for moths
that the girl had come to Guy's Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair;
as he did so, he heard a low sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring,
angry sound, like a hiss; he looked round, and through the dark, two
burning eyes fixed his own: he had startled a snake from its bed. He
drew out in time, as the reptile sprang; but now his task, search, and
object were forgotten. With the versatility of a child, his thoughts
were all on the enemy he had provoked. That zest of prey which is
inherent in man's breast, which makes him love the sport and the chase,
and maddens boyhood and age with the passion for slaughter, leaped up
within him; anything of danger and contest and excitement gave Gabriel
Varney a strange fever of pleasure. He sprang up the sides of the dell,
climbed the park pales on which it bordered, was in the wood where the
young shoots rose green and strong from the underwood. To cut a staff
for the strife, to descend again into the dell, creep again through
the fissure, look round for those vengeful eyes, was quick done as the
joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake had slid down in content and
fancied security; its young, perhaps, were not far off; its wrath had
been the instinct Nature gives to the mother. It hath done thee no harm
yet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter had no ear to such whisper
of prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the fissure, he struck the ground
and the tree with his stick, shouted out, bade the eyes gleam, and
defied them. Whether or not the reptile had spent its ire in the first
fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return of the intruder rather
daunted than exasperated, we leave those better versed in natural
history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the challenge and courting
the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak, close to the very feet
of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged its gray coils through
the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it. Gabriel sprang through the
fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it with a laugh of scorn
as he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared its crest; the throat
swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and again, green as emeralds,
glared the spite of its eyes. No fear felt Gabriel Varney; his arm was
averted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly, with the eye of an artist.
Had he had pencil and tab