Part 5

I stood as stiff as a post. He sniffed at my dew-wet boots, backed away, and looked me over curiously. I could have touched him with my fork. Then he sat down with just his silver-tipped brush in the silver moonlight, to study me in earnest.

The loud baying of the hounds was coming nearer. How often I had heard it, and, in spite of my lost chickens, how often I had exclaimed, "Poor little tired fox!" But here sat "poor little tired fox" with his tongue in his head, calmly wondering what kind of stump he had run up against this time.

I could only dimly see his eyes, but his whole body said: "I can't make it out, for it doesn't move. But so long as it doesn't move I sha'n't be scared." Then he trotted to this side and to that for a better wind, somewhat afraid, but much more curious.

His time was up, however. The dogs were yelping across the meadow on his warm trail. Giving me a last unsatisfied look, he dropped down the path, directly toward the dogs, and sprang lightly off into the thicket.

The din of their own voices must have deafened the dogs, or they would have heard him. Round and round they circled, giving the fox ample time for the study of another "stump" before they discovered that he had doubled down the path, and still longer time before they crossed the wide scentless space of his side jump and once more fastened upon his trail.

III

Back in my knickerbocker days I once went off on a Sunday-school picnic, and soon, replete with "copenhagen," I sauntered into the woods alone in quest of less cloying sport. I had not gone far when I picked up a dainty little ribbon-snake, and having no bag or box along, I rolled him up in my handkerchief, and journeyed on with the wiggling reptile safely caged on top of my head under my tight-fitting hat.

After a time I began to feel a peculiar movement under the hat, not exactly the crawling of a normal snake, but more like that of a snake with legs. Those were the days when all my soul was bent on the discovery of a new species--of anything; when the whole of life meant a journey to the Academy of Natural Sciences with something to be named. For just an instant flashed the hope that I had found an uncursed snake, one of the original ones that went on legs. I reached for the hat, bent over, and pulled it off, and, lo! not a walking snake. Just an ordinary snake, but with it a live wood-frog!

This, at least, was interesting, the only real piece of magic I have ever done. Into my hat had gone only a live snake, now I brought forth the snake and a live frog. This was a snake to conjure with; so I tied him up again and finally got him home.

The next Sunday the minister preached a temperance sermon, in which he said some dreadful things about snakes. The creatures do seem in some dark, horrible way to lurk in the dregs of strong drink: but the minister was not discriminating; he was too fierce and sweeping, saying, among other things, that there was a universal human hatred for snakes, and that one of the chief purposes of the human heel was to bruise their scaly heads.

I was not born of my Quaker mother to share this "universal human hatred for snakes"; but I did get from her a wild dislike for sweeping, general statements. After the sermon I ventured to tell the preacher that there was an exception to this "universal" rule; that all snakes were not adders and serpents, but some were just innocent snakes, and that I had a collection of tame ones which I wished he would come out to see.

He looked astonished, skeptical, then pained. It was during the days, I think, of my "probation," and into his anxious heart had come the thought, Was I "running well"? But he dismissed the doubt and promised to walk over in the morning.

His interest amazed me. But, then, preachers quite commonly are different on Monday. As we went from cage to cage, he said he had read how boa-constrictors eat, and wouldn't I show him how these snakes eat?

We had come to the cage of the little ribbon-snake from the picnic grove, and had arrived just in time to catch him crawling away out of a hole that he had worked in the rusty mosquito-netting wire of the cover. I caught him, put him back, and placed a brickbat over the hole.

I knew that this snake was hungry, because he had had nothing to eat for nearly a week, and the frog which appeared so mysteriously with him in my hat was the dinner that he had given up that day of his capture in his effort to escape.

The minister looked on without a tremor. I took off the brick that he might see the better. The snake was very long and small around and the toad, which I had given him, was very short and big around, so that when it was all over there was a bunch in the middle of the snake comparable to the lump a prime watermelon would make in the middle of a small boy if swallowed whole.

While we were still watching, the snake, having comfortably (for a snake) breakfasted, saw the hole uncovered and stuck out his head. We made no move. Slowly, cautiously, with his eye upon us, he glided out, up to the big bunch of breakfast in his middle. This stuck. Frantically he squirmed, whirled, and lashed about, but in vain. He could not pull through. He had eaten too much.

There was just one thing for him to do if he would be free: give up the breakfast of toad (which is much better fare according to snake standards than pottage according to ours), as he had given up the dinner of frog. Would he sell his birthright?

Perhaps a snake cannot calculate; perhaps he knows no conflict of emotions. Yet something very like these processes seemed to go on within the scaly little reptile. He ceased all violent struggle, laid his length upon the netting, and seemed to think, to weigh the chances, to count the cost.

Soon he softly drew back into the cage. A series of severe contortions followed; the obstructing bunch began to move forward, up, farther and farther, until at last, dazed, squeezed, and half smothered, but entirely alive and unhurt, the toad appeared and once more opened his eyes to the blessed light.

The snake quickly put his head through the hole, slipped out again, and glided away into his freedom. He had earned it. The toad deserved his liberty too, and I took him into the strawberry-patch.

The minister looked on at it all. Perhaps he didn't learn anything. But I did.

THE MARSH

THE MARSH

And breathe it free, and breathe it free, By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

It was a late June day whose breaking found me upon the edge of the great salt-marshes which lie behind East Point Light, as the Delaware Bay lies in front of it, and which run in a wide, half-land, half-bay border down the cape.

I followed along the black sandy road which goes to the Light until close to the old Zane's Place,--the last farm-house of the uplands,--when I turned off into the marsh toward the river. The mosquitos rose from the damp grass at every step, swarming up around me in a cloud, and streaming off behind like a comet's tail, which hummed instead of glowed. I was the only male among them. It was a cloud of females, the nymphs of the salt-marsh; and all through that day the singing, stinging, smothering swarm danced about me, rested upon me, covered me whenever I paused, so that my black leggings turned instantly to a mosquito brown, and all my dress seemed dyed alike.

Only I did not pause--not often, nor long. The sun came up blisteringly hot, yet on I walked, and wore my coat, my hands deep down in the pockets and my head in a handkerchief. At noon I was still walking, and kept on walking till I reached the bay shore, when a breeze came up, and drove the singing, stinging fairies back into the grass, and saved me.