Rciggylug 8 1 



much torn by the teeth ot that dreadful Ser« 

 pent, 



Molly had now gained all she wanted. She 

 had no notion of fighting for glory or revenge. 

 Away she went into the woods and the little 

 one followed the shining beacon of her snow- 

 white tail until she led him to a safe corner of 

 the Swamp. 



II 



Old Olif ant's Swamp was a rough, brambly 

 tract of second-growth woods, with a marshy 

 pond and a stream through the middle. A 

 few ragged remnants of the old forest still 

 stood in it and a few of the still older trunks 

 were lying about as dead logs in the brush- 

 wood. The land about the pond was of that 

 willow-grown, sedgy kind that cats and horses 

 avoid, but that cattle do not fear. The drier 

 zones were overgrown with briars and young 

 trees. The outermost belt of all, that next the 

 fields, was of thrifty, gummy-trunked young 

 pines whose living needles in air and dead 

 ones on earth offer so delicious an odor to the 

 nostrils of the passer - by, and so deadly a 

 breath to those seedlings that would compete 

 with them for the worthless waste they grow 



