a flat stone every day--always cold--never can get warm. Eh?"

She had not spoken, but was gazing into space with a breathless rigidity
of attitude and a fixed look in her eye, not unlike the motionless orbs
of the reptile that had glided away.

"Does anybody else know you keep him?" she asked.

"Nary one. I never showed him to anybody but you," replied the boy.

"Don't! You must show me where he hides to-morrow," she said, in her old
laughing way. "And now, Leon, I must go back to the house."

"May I write to him--to Jim Belcher, Mrs. Burroughs?" said the boy
timidly.

"Certainly. And come to me to-morrow with your letter--I will have mine
ready. Good-by." She stopped and glanced at the trail. "And you say that
if that man had kept on, the snake would have bitten him?"

"Sure pop!--if he'd trod on him--as he was sure to. The snake wouldn't
have known he didn't mean it. It's only natural," continued Leonidas,
with glowing partisanship for the gentle and absent William Henry. "YOU
wouldn't like to be trodden upon, Mrs. Burroughs!"

"No! I'd strike out!" she said quickly. She made a rapid motion forward
with her low forehead and level head, leaving it rigid the next moment,
so that it reminded him of the snake, and he laughed. At which she
laughed too, and tripped away.