The day marched nobly on towards evening, growing out of its blue and
silver into a pervasive golden gleam; the bare, greyish houses on the
prairie were transformed into miniature palaces of light. Presently a
girl came out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house with a
half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand a fishing rod which had
been telescoped till it was no bigger than a cane; in the other she
carried a small fishing basket. Her father's shooting and fishing camp
was a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this which she
approached. She had tired of the gay company in camp, brought up for
sport from beyond the American border where she also belonged, and she
had come to explore the river running into this reedy lake. She turned
from the house and came nearer to the lake, shaking her head, as though
compassionating the poor, folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her
hair was brown, going to tawny, but in this soft light which enwrapped
her, she was in a sort of topaz flame. As she came on, suddenly she
stopped as though transfixed. She saw the man--and saw also a tragedy
afoot.

The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he
did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself
in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralysed.

The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his
angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing rod
she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at
the head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was
sure, and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground