gate....

Colonel de Warrenne stepped into his office to get a cheroot.
Re-appearing in the verandah with it in his mouth he halted and thrust
his hand inside his tunic for his small match-case. Ere he could use
the match his heart was momentarily chilled by the most blood-curdling
scream he had ever heard. It appeared to come from the drawing-room.
(Colonel de Warrenne never lit the cheroot that he had put to his
lips--nor ever another again.) Springing to the door, one of a
dozen that opened into the verandah, he saw his son struggling on the
ground, racked by convulsive spasms, with glazed, sightless eyes and
foaming mouth, from which issued appalling, blood-curdling shrieks.
Just above him, on the fat satin cushion in the middle of a low
settee, a huge half-coiled cobra swayed from side to side in the Dance
of Death.

"_It's under my foot--it's moving--moving--moving out_," shrieked the
child.

Colonel de Warrenne attended to the snake first. He half-drew his
sword and then slammed it back into the scabbard. No--his sword was
not for snakes, whatever his son might be. On the wall was a trophy of
Afghan weapons, one of which was a sword that had played a prominent
part on the occasion of the Colonel's winning of the Victoria Cross.

Striding to the wall he tore the sword down, drew it and, with raised
arm, sprang towards the cobra. A good "Cut Three" across the coils
would carve it into a dozen pieces. No. Lenore made that cushion--and
Lenore's cushion made more appeal to Colonel de Warrenne than did
Lenore's son. No. A neat horizontal "Cut Two," just below the head,