"He has three rooms in his house fitted up as a reptile zoo.
He collects them from everywhere. He says--and he seems to
believe it--that they won't hurt him and that he can handle
them as safely as if they were kittens. Just like that man
they used to have in the post office up at Orlando, who used
to sit with his arms full of rattlesnakes and moccasins, and
pet them."

"Yes," said Gavin, absentmindedly, as he struggled against an
almost overmastering impulse which was gripping him. "I
remember. But at last one of his pets killed him. He--"

"How did you know?" she asked, surprised. "How in the world
should a newcomer from the North know about--"

"Oh, I read it in a Florida dispatch to one of the New York
papers," he said, impatient at his own blunder. "And it was
such a strange story it stuck in my memory. It--"

"Well," resumed Claire, "I think I've made you understand the
simple and natural things that led up to it all. And now,
I'll tell you everything, at least everything I know about
it. It's--it's a gruesome sort of story, and--and I've grown
to hate it all so!" She quivered. Then, squaring her young
shoulders again, she continued:

"I don't ask you to believe what I'm going to tell you. But
it's all true. It began this way:

"One night, six months ago, as Milo and I were sitting on the