THE SERPENT IN THE EDEN. 251 



feet of us, and a grosbeak singing his love song, 

 so near that we had hopes of finding his home, 

 also, in this secluded nook. 



The alighting of a bird low down on the 

 trunk of a tree, perhaps twenty feet away, 

 called the attention of my friend to a neighbor 

 we had not counted upon, a large snake, with, 

 as we noted with horror, the color and markings 

 of the dreaded rattler. He had, as it seemed, 

 started to climb one of the leaning trunks, and 

 when he had reached a point where the trunk 

 divided into two parts, his head about two feet 

 up, and the lower part of his body still on the 

 ground, had stopped, and now rested thus, mo- 

 tionless as the tree itself. It may be that it was 

 the sudden presence of his hereditary enemy 

 that held him apparently spellbound, or it is 

 possible that this position served his own pur- 

 poses better than any other. Our first impulse 

 was to leave his lordship in undisputed pos- 

 session of his shady retreat ; but the second 

 thought, which held us, was to see what sort of 

 reception the robins would give him. There 

 was a nest full of young on a neighboring tree, 

 and it was the mother who had come down to 

 interview the foe. Would she call her mate ? 

 Would the neighbors come to the rescue? 

 Should we see a fight, such as we had read of ? 

 We decided to wait for the result. 



