110 THE WINGED SNAKE. 
Days passed, and yet once more the boy 
visited the hole. He could not see far in, but 
he could detect a pointed something that had 
not been there before. He put in his hand. 
And then, suddenly, came a hiss, prolonged 
and venomous—the hiss of a snake—from the 
hole, and—the boy fled, holding his hand, and 
wondering if the snake had bitten him. 
But it was only the poor wryneck sitting on 
her third clutch of eggs, and the point had 
been her beak, and the hiss hers, too. 
