s and told his chum that he was going to take
him to a doctor. Dick laughed and said:

"You are my doctor. I've great confidence in you and don't care to
make a change."

"Glad to hear it. Your doctor, in whom you have such confidence,
desires to consult with his brother physicians in Fort Myers
regarding your case, and you will light out with him to-morrow."

The next morning a little canoe with a cat couchant in the bow, a
young invalid comfortably reclining amidships and a husky youth in
the stern started down the river and into the salt-water lakes. The
first day's run was a short one and the camp was made on a bit of
high ground covered with thin grass and shaded by a group of
palmettos. It was bordered about with cocoa plums and sweet-smelling
myrtle, on one of which flourished an orchid, the vanilla bean,
which made heavy with its fragrance the whole camping site.

"But there lurked a taint in the clime so blest,
Like a serpent coiled in a ring-dove's nest"--

and as Ned stood dazed by the enchantment of his environment, he was
brought to earth with a jar by the whirring of rattles almost under
his feet. Every muscle of the boy was tense with excitement as he
stood motionless, knowing that death, in a horrible form, was within
striking distance of him. The strange, paralyzing music of the
dreaded "King Snake" of the Indians seems to come from all sides
and until the threatened victim can see the reptile the motion of a
hand may be fatal. The seconds seemed minutes to Ned as he waited
and watched, waited and watched, before he saw the fascinating,
dreadful, gently swaying head and the lightning play of the forked
tongue within easy striking distance.

[Illustration: "HE SAW THE GENTLY SWAYING HEAD AND THE LIGHTNING
FLAY OF THE FORKED TONGUE"]

He felt that if he jumped, the snake, so much quicker than he, would
sink the glistening white fangs of that wide-open mouth deep in his
flesh before he could get out of reach. He compelled his quivering
nerves to hold steady while he slowly, inch by inch, moved away from
the coils of the angry reptile. When Ned was six feet from the
rattlesnake he sprang back and stood, almost fainting, quite out of
reach of the reptile, which continued to wave its head and jar its
rattles, but with less passion. The boy had often been told never to
leave a rattlesnake alive and he looked around until he found a
stick about five feet long, with which he returned to the fiel