or two flew out. It was not for moths that the girl had come to Guy's
Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair; as he did so, he heard a low
sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring, angry sound, like a hiss; he
looked round, and through the dark, two burning eyes fixed his own: he
had startled a snake from its bed. He drew out in time, as the reptile
sprang; but now his task, search, and object were forgotten. With the
versatility of a child, his thoughts were all on the enemy he had
provoked. That zest of prey which is inherent in man's breast, which
makes him love the sport and the chase, and maddens boyhood and age with
the passion for slaughter, leaped up within him; anything of danger and
contest and excitement gave Gabriel Varney a strange fever of pleasure.
He sprang up the sides of the dell, climbed the park pales on which it
bordered, was in the wood where the young shoots rose green and strong
from the underwood. To cut a staff for the strife, to descend again into
the dell, creep again through the fissure, look round for those vengeful
eyes, was quick done as the joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake
had slid down in content and fancied security; its young, perhaps, were
not far off; its wrath had been the instinct Nature gives to the mother.
It hath done thee no harm yet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter
had no ear to such whisper of prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the
fissure, he struck the ground and the tree with his stick, shouted out,
bade the eyes gleam, and defied them. Whether or not the reptile had
spent its ire in the first fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return
of the intruder rather daunted than exasperated, we leave those better
versed in natural history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the
challenge and courting the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak,
close to the very feet of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged
its gray coils through the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it.
Gabriel sprang through the fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it
with a laugh of scorn as he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared