It happened, however, that Fate had for this day decreed immunity for the timid people of the broom grass. The rattlesnake, having crossed the road, had arrived at the verge of the shallow ditch at a point where a well-beaten path led down the slope between two walls of dense thorny weeds and up the bank beyond into the field. Three feet of his thick body had entered this narrow pass when suddenly he paused. At the bottom of the ditch and full in the path, a slender serpent, whose lustrous black body was ringed with narrow stripes of white, lay stretched at full length, motionless and apparently asleep.
The rattlesnake paused only for an instant. It was surprise, not fear, which had arrested momentarily the slow forward flowing of his massive body; and almost immediately this unaccustomed emotion, impressed but faintly upon his dim intelligence, was lost in the strange senseless fury which possessed him.
He had seen but little of other serpents—except those of his own kind with whom he lived at peace and with whom at certain seasons he was accustomed to associate. His experience with other snakes had taught him only that they, like all the other forest-dwellers, owned his mastery; and, though this slim, white-ringed serpent in the path in front of him was of a sort which he had never
