As the mass of reading matter came down some dirt and a small wiggling object not over two feet long came with it. Jack was ready to fire, but suddenly thought better of it and, leaping forward, placed his foot on the object.
“Just a plain little garter snake,” he said, with a laugh. “If I had shot it there wouldn’t have been enough left to show Jeff.”
“Maybe the big snake is among the papers,” suggested Fred, who stood just behind Gif.
“We’ll soon see,” returned Gif, and with the broom he scattered the papers and magazines in every direction and with it a quantity of dust and cobwebs. But nothing in the way of a reptile appeared.
“Here, give me that snake,” said Gif, after they had looked around the floor carefully. And catching the little reptile by the tail he snapped it into the air, almost severing the head from the body. Then, still holding the snake, he went into the other room.
“Here’s the thing that stung you, Jeff,” he said coolly. “Those stings won’t hurt you any more than the sting from a good big mosquito. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for getting so scared over nothing,” he added, a bit more sternly.
Jeff was crouched before the fire, rocking to and fro and moaning. Now he looked up with staring eyes at the little snake Gif was holding.
“Tha—tha—that ain’t the snake what stung me,” he faltered.
“Yes, it is, Jeff. We just got it out of that bunch of papers on the shelf. There isn’t another snake anywhere around. How this little thing got in and on the shelf, I don’t know. Must have crawled in through some little hole in the floor or the wall.”
“I—I—I’m certain sure it was a big snake what stung me,” mumbled the colored man.