objects in every point of view, he had fled; but I found him within
fifty yards in the form of a _rattlesnake_, full six feet from tip to
tip, and glorying in fourteen full rattles.

"I had my revenge in every possible form. I looked at him for ten
minutes at a time, but the power was gone, and I only saw two keen,
devilish-looking eyes. Then I punched him till he spent all his venom
on my stick. Then I made him drunk on tobacco juice, ingloriously and
brutally drunk.

"Getting tired at last, I gave him the _coup de grace_, skinned him,
and returned home. He hangs now in loops over my family bed. Those
eyes that thrilled my heart so strangely are dim with dust. Those
fangs, which in a few minutes more would probably have sent death to
the heart's fountain of my boy, are now in Europe, a part of the
collection admired by countless crowds at the British Museum. The
subject is fast fading from my memory,'mid the cares of life, and had
you not asked me to write it out for you, I should have thought of it
but a little longer. Let it stand as another testimony, and a most
unwilling one, too, of the fascinating powers of serpents on the
human."

So far my correspondent tells his own tale in language sufficiently
plain and explicit. If any figure him out as a man of feeble frame and
low stature, let them change their fancy at once.

He is a strong, muscular man, an old bear hunter, one who has fought
Indians in the Florida swamps; a person withal, of unquestionable
veracity, and in all respects the last man to impose on others, or be
imposed upon by anything, fish, flesh, or fowl.