THE WINGED SNAKE. 109 
with black, and it writhed and wreathed its 
head about at the form of the retreating rat 
so precisely after the manner of a snake that, 
till its body showed, any one might have 
mistaken it for a snake, after all. 
The bird was a wryneck, which is a 
‘cuckoo’s mate,’ which is a ‘snake-bird,’ 
according to choice. 
It came out of the hole. It flew down to 
the ground, where the little red ants were 
already hard at work around their city, and 
there, writhing its head about always in the 
same strange, snake-like way, it shot out a 
long, gummy tongue and fed upon ants, 
wiping them up as fast as they rushed from 
the main gate of their city. 
A few weeks later a bird-nesting urchin 
crept into the deserted garden and hunted 
through it in his own gentle way. It seemed 
to him that he saw something dart into the 
hole in the old apple-tree, and he climbed up 
to investigate. 
Whatever it had been, however, it had 
now gone, and his hand, feeling in the hole, 
encountered seven white eggs, which he took: 
A few days later he was again in the 
garden, and again that elusive vision vanished 
from the hole, and again he found seven white 
eggs, and took them. 
