THE EARLY SNAKE 33 



a snake last summer. It is useless to look anywhere 

 so early in the year for the biggest grass-snake ever 

 seen, one that seemed fully five feet long, that used 

 to lie out there not far from where the marsh- 

 marigolds are beginning to look so golden. She is 

 certainly still coiled up asleep and unconscious, with 

 others of her kind, in some deep, dry hole, and the 

 early snake, if found to-day, must be a viper. For 

 the viper, like its prey the mice and voles, is a light 

 sleeper and usually an early waker. The first young 

 bird is by no means safe from him, and the robin has 

 already scooped out the cup for her nest in the 

 mossy bank near the path through the wood. It 

 is only fifty yards away from the first of our viper 

 haunts. 



The sun beats well to-day on the long bank or 

 little hill, the crest of which is bounded by a dry wall 

 backed by a larch wood. Here, when the turf of this 

 warm limestone hill was dotted with ripe wild 

 strawberries, a pair of large vipers were always at 

 home. Their keep was in the wall, to which they 

 used to glide when alarmed, first the more active 

 male, then the heavy female could be seen within 

 the entrance to her narrow den, slowly withdrawing 

 fold by fold, till at last her kitten-like tail was tucked 

 safely away. 



It is not usually so easy to analyse the order of the 

 viper's going and coming. As we walk along, 

 thinking of anything but vipers, there seems to rise 

 out of the ground the picture and then the model of 

 the beautiful serpent. Modest as is its pattern of 

 grey and black, it ends by arresting the attention 

 with the inevitableness of mesmerism. First the 



