“Which way did he go?” I said; “let’s hunt him.”
“No good,” said my companion quietly. “He’s off down some hole long enough ago. Never mind him; I can show you plenty of snakes in the woods, and adders too.”
“They sting, don’t they?” I said.
“No.”
“They do. Adders or vipers are poisonous.”
“Yes, but they don’t sting; they bite. They’ve got poisoned fangs. You can see an adder along here sometimes. Perhaps we shall see one to-day, warming himself in the sun.”
But we did not, for a few minutes later we approached a swing gate, just as the keeper came round a curve in the opposite direction.
“Here you are, then,” he said, “just right. Farmer Dawson’s gone off to market, and so we shan’t have to ask leave. Come on, and let’s see if we can find Jem Roff.”
He pushed open the gate, and we went along a cart track for some distance, and then on through one of the hop-gardens, with its tall poles draped with the climbing rough-leaved vines, some of which had reached over and joined hands with their fellows, to make loops and festoons, all beautiful to my town-bred eyes, as was the glimpse I caught of a long, low old English farmhouse and garden, with a row of bee-hives, as we went round a great yard surrounded by buildings—stables, barns, sheds, and cow-houses, with at one corner four tall towers, looking like blunt steeples with the tops cut off to accommodate as many large wooden cowls.
“What are they?” I asked.