utterance to that odd sound, and with the fury of a young demon. The
woman had reached the bank and stood, unknowing what to do, shrieking
in maternal terror, while across the clearing a man was running. And
then a fierce chance blow, delivered with all the strength of the
maddened boy, alighted fairly, just below the head of the snake
carrying away the bird, and in a second it was done for, floating,
writhing down the stream with a broken neck, and its tiny prey loosened
and drifting away beside it.

The mother gasped in relief, but only for a moment. The boy cast one
glance at the floating reptile and the bird, and only one, then turned
to the other serpent. It had almost reached the shore, and between
that and the covert it might attain was a stretch of shrubless ground.
Already its black length was defined on the short grass when the boy
rushed from the water with uplifted club, just as his father came in
full view of the scene from the other side. With cries like those of
some young wild beast, the child ran at the snake, raining blows with
the stout club, and with rage in every feature. The black-snake,
checked in its course, turned with the constrictor's instinct and
sprang at the boy, whipping its strong coils about one of its
assailant's legs and rearing its head aloft to a level with his face.
The boy but struck and gasped and stumbled over some obstruction, and,
somehow, the snake was wrenched away, and then there was another rush
at it, another rain of blows, and it was hit as had been its mate, and
lay twisting with a broken back. The man dashed through the creek and
came upon the scene with a great stick in his hand, but its use was not
required. The only labor which devolved upon him was to tear away from
his quarry the boy who was possessed of a spirit of rage and vengeance
beyond all reasoning. Upon the heaving, tossing thing, so that he
would have been fairly in its coils had it possessed longer any power,