l summer day, and Mr. Munchausen
had come up from the simmering city of Cimmeria to spend a day or two
with Diavolo and Angelica and their venerable parents. They had all
had dinner, and were now out on the back piazza overlooking the
magnificent river Styx, which flowed from the mountains to the sea,
condescending on its way thither to look in upon countless
insignificant towns which had grown up on its banks, among which was
the one in which Diavolo and Angelica had been born and lived all
their lives. Mr. Munchausen was lying comfortably in a hammock,
collecting his thoughts.

Angelica was somewhat depressed, but Diavolo was jubilant and all
because in the course of a walk they had had that morning Diavolo had
killed a snake.

"It was fine sport," said Diavolo. "He was lying there in the sun, and
I took a stick and put him out of his misery in two minutes."

Here Diavolo illustrated the process by whacking the Baron over his
waist-coat with a small malacca stick he carried.

"Well, I didn't like it," said Angelica. "I don't care for snakes, but
somehow or other it seems to me we'd ought to have left him alone. He
wasn't hurting anybody off there. If he'd come walking on our place,
that would have been one thing, but we went walking where he was, and
he had as much right to take a sun-bath there as we had."

"That's true enough," put in Mr. Munchausen, resolved after Diavolo's
whack, to side against him. "You've just about hit it, Angelica. It
wasn't polite of you in the first place, to disturb his snakeship in
his nap, and having done so, I can't see why Diavolo wanted to kill
him."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Diavolo, airily. "What's snakes good for except to
kill? I'll kill 'em every chance I get. They aren't any good."

"All right," said Mr. Munchausen, quietly. "I suppose you know all
about it; but I know a thing or two about snakes myself that do not
exactly agree with what you say. They are some good sometimes, and, as
a matter of fact, as a general rule, they are less apt to attack you
without reason than you are to attack them. A snake is rather inclined
to mind its own business unless he finds it necessary to do otherwise.
Occasionally too you'll find a snake with a truly amiable character.
I'll never forget my old pet Wriggletto, for instance, and as long as
I remember him I can't help having a warm corner for snakes in my
heart."

Here Mr. Munchausen paused and puffed thoughtfully on his cigar as a
far-a