The boy walked quite a distance before he found anything that he could use. He glanced about nervously, for he did not fancy being in the forest.
"Give me the plains and the lakes!" he thought. "There you can see what you are likely to meet. Now, if this were a grove of little birches, it would be well enough, for then the ground would be almost bare; but how people can like these wild, pathless forests is incomprehensible to me. If I owned this land I would chop down every tree."
At last he caught sight of a piece of birch bark, and just as he was fitting it to his foot he heard a rustle behind him. He turned quickly. A snake darted from the brush straight toward him!
The snake was uncommonly long and thick, but the boy soon saw that it had a white spot on each cheek.
"Why, it's only a water-snake," he laughed; "it can't harm me."
But the next instant the snake gave him a powerful blow on the chest that knocked him down. The boy was on his feet in a second and running away, but the snake was after him! The ground was stony and scrubby; the boy could not proceed very fast; and the snake was close at his heels.
Then the boy saw a big rock in front of him, and began to scale it.
"I do hope the snake can't follow me here!" he thought, but he had no sooner reached the top of the rock than he saw that the snake was following him.
Quite close to the boy, on a narrow ledge at the top of the rock, lay a round stone as large as a man's head. As the snake came closer, the boy ran behind the stone, and gave it a push. It rolled right down on the snake, drawing it along to the ground, where it landed on its head.
"That stone did its work well!" thought the boy with a sigh of relief, as he saw the snake squirm a little, and then lie perfectly still.