"I shan't miss."

She took the willow stick from my brother's hand. Every movement of
his she reproduced exactly, even to the setting of her heel upon the
serpent's head. Then she smiled at us apologetically.

"I hated to do it. I was scared to death, but I wanted to conquer that
cowardly Belle. It's just as you say, they're killed mighty easy. If
we could kill the Old Serpent as easy----" she sighed, not finishing
the sentence.

Ajax, who has a trick of saying what others think, blurted out--

"What do you mean by conquering--Belle?"

We sat down.

"My name is Alethea-Belle, a double name. Father wanted to call me
Alethea; but mother fancied Belle. Father, you know, was a
Massachusetts minister; mother came from way down south. She died when
I was a child. She--she was not very strong, poor mother, but father,"
she spoke proudly, "father was the best man that ever lived."

All her self-consciousness had vanished. Somehow we felt that the
daughter of the New England parson was speaking, not the child of the
invertebrate Southerner.

"I had to take to selling books," she continued, speaking more to
herself than to us, "because of Belle. That miserable girl got into
debt. Father left her a little money. Belle squandered it sinfully on