whose specialty was snakes. Very much enamored was he of most of
nature's products, but not at all of the family _ophidia_. Snakes were
his specialty simply because he did not approve of them. All dated
back to the affair of three years before. Snakes were abundant in the
wood, but were not of many kinds. There were garter-snakes, dreaded of
the little frogs, but timid of most things; there was a small snake of
wonderful swiftness and as green as the grass into which it darted;
there were the water pilots, sunning themselves in coils upon the
driftwood in the water, swart of color, thick of form and offensive of
aspect; there were the milk-snakes, yellowish gray, with wonderful
banded sides and with checker-board designs in black upon their yellow
bellies. Sometimes a pan of milk from the solitary cow, set for its
cream in the dug-out cellar beneath the house, would be found with its
yellow surface marred and with a white puddling about the floor, and
then the milk remaining would be thrown away and there would be a
washing and scalding of the pan, because the thief was known. There
were, in the lowlands, the massasaugas; short, sluggish rattle-snakes,
venomous but cowardly, and, finally, there were the black-snakes
ranging everywhere, for no respecter of locality is _bascanion
constrictor_ when in pursuit of prey. Largest of all the snakes of the
region, the only constrictor among them, at home in the lowlands, on
the hill-sides or in the tree-tops, the black-snake was the dread of
all small creatures of the wood. There was a story of how one of them
had dropped upon a hunter, coiled himself about his neck and strangled
him.

This young man of six remembered how, one day, three years back, before
he had assumed trousers or become familiar with all the affairs of the
world, he was alone in the house, his mother having gone into the
little garden. He remembered how, looking up, he saw, lifted above the
doorsill, a head with beady, glittering eyes, and how, after a moment's
survey, the head was lifted higher and there came gliding over the
floor toward him a black monster, with darting tongue and long, curved
body and evident fierce intent. He remembered how he leaped for a high
stool which served him at the table, how he clambered to its top and
there set up a mighty yell for succor--for he had great lungs. He
could, by shutting his eyes, even now, see his mother as she came
running from the garden, see her