Lucille sank down at the foot of the tree as I bounded forward, certain now that my cast had been successful. It was the work of but an instant to lift her out of the way of the flying body of the snake, for I feared that it might, even yet, strike out blindly, but none the less fatally. Lucille rested in my arms, her senses having left her for the moment, and I carried her to a spring near by, where I revived her with the cold water. She opened her eyes a little.
“You are safe now,” I said. She smiled faintly, then shuddered, and closed her eyes again. Presently she gazed up at me, and whispered:
“Oh, it was horrible! I shall never forget it!”
I calmed her as well as I could, and she soon recovered her composure. She declared that she was well enough to walk home, but I protested, and begged that she would allow me to get a cart from a near-by farmer.
“Oh, no,” she answered, “I could not stay another minute in these woods now. Let me go with you. I can walk, indeed I can; see,” and she stepped out bravely enough, but was forced to stop from trembling and weakness.
Then I insisted that she lean on my arm, which, after some hesitation, she consented to do.
“I was after some arbutus,” she said as we walked along, “and it only grows in the glen. I had plucked some when, just as I reached for a beautiful cluster, I saw the snake coiled before me. And then it seemed as if I could not move. My eyes grew heavy, and there was no life in me. It began to get dark, and then, and then--all at once I saw a flash of light, I heard the hiss of the reptile, and it grew all black, and I fell. The next I knew you were bending over me.”
“I thank God,” I said, “that I chanced by here to-day.”
“Aye, ’twas a most fortunate chance,” she answered.
“Mayhap it was more than chance--my fate,” I said softly, and she did not reply.