look of terror as she caught sight of
the circling thing upon the floor, and then the look of desperation as
the mother instinct rose superior and she dashed into the room, seized
the great iron shovel that stood before the fireplace, and began
dealing reckless blows at the hissing serpent. A big black-snake is
not a pleasant customer, but neither--for a black-snake--is a frenzied
mother with an iron fire shovel in her hand, and this particular snake
turned tail, a great deal of it, by the way, since it extended to its
head, and disappeared over the doorsill in a cataract of black and into
the wood again.

From that hour the individual so beleaguered on a stool had been no
friend of snakes. Talk about vendettas! No Sicilian feud was ever
bitterer or more relentlessly pursued, as the boy increased in size and
confidence. Scores of garter-snakes had been his victims; once even a
milk-snake had yielded up the ghost, and once--a great day that--he had
seen a black-snake in the open and had assailed it valorously with
stones hurled from a distance. When it came toward him he retreated,
but did not abandon the bombardment, and finally drove it into a cover
of deep bushes. Come to close quarters with a black-snake he had never
done, for a double reason: firstly, because stones did almost as well
as a club, and, secondly, because his father, fearing for him, had
threatened him with punishment if he essayed such combat, and the firm
old rule of "spare the rod and spoil the child" was adhered to
literally by the father and indorsed by the mother with hesitation.
And, growing close to the house, were slender sprouts of birch and
willow, each of which leaned forward as if to say, "I am just the thing
to lick a boy with," and such a sprout as one of these, especially the
willow, does, under proper conditions, so embrace one's shoulders and
curl about one's legs and make itself familiar. But the feud was on,
and as a permanency, though, on this particular afternoon, the young
man, as he stood there in the doorway, had no thought of snakes.
Something else this summer was attracting much of his attention. He
had a family on his hands.

CHAPTER III.

BOY, BIRD AND SNAKE.

The young man's family was not large, but a part of it was young, and
he felt the responsibility. The song-sparrow is the very light and
gladness of the woods and fields. There are rarer singers, and birds
of more brilliant plumage, but he is the