THE OLD SUGAR MILL. 119 
So I sat dreaming, when suddenly there 
was a stir in the grass at my feet. A snake 
was coming straight toward me. Only the 
evening before a cracker had filled my ears 
with stories of “rattlers ” and “moccasins.” 
He seemed to have seen them everywhere, 
and to have killed them as one kills mosqui- 
toes. I looked a second time at the moving 
thing in the grass. It was clothed in inno- 
cent black; but, being a son of Adam, I 
rose with involuntary politeness to let it 
pass. An instant more, and it slipped into 
the masonry at my side, and I sat down 
again. It had been out taking the sun, and 
had come back to its hole in the wall. How 
like the story of my own day,—of my 
whole winter vacation! Nay, if we choose 
to view it so, how like the story of human 
life itself ! 
As I started homeward, leaving the mill 
and the cabin behind me, some cattle were 
feeding in the grassy road. At sight of my 
umbrella (there are few places where a 
sunshade is more welcome than in a Flor- 
ida pine-wood) they scampered away into 
the scrub. Poor, wild-eyed, hungry-looking 
things! I thought of Pharaoh’s lean kine. 
