"John G. Harriman."
This notice attracted the attention of a number of the people of the town, who gathered in a little crowd to read it; and after that had been done, most of the good folks sat down on the benches in front of the tavern to talk about it. It was generally agreed that Mr. Harriman must be either a showman, or one of those scientific fellows who go about the country collecting weeds and bits of stone, and all manner of worms and insects. Whatever he might have been, any one in the town who had happened to own a live rattlesnake would have been glad to let him have it for a dollar; but it was pretty certain that no one possessed such a creature. There were, however, in the stony hills and mountains around Cornham plenty of rattlesnakes, and it was in the hope of inducing some of the villagers to capture one of these for him that Mr. Harriman had put up his notice.
About nine o'clock Tom Welden came walking by the tavern, and stopped to read the notice. Tom was fourteen years old, and was the son of a farmer in the neighborhood. He had finished his morning's work about the barn, and had come into town to get something from the store.
The notice was very interesting to Tom, and he read it twice. A dollar was to him quite a large sum of money, and he was not long in making up his mind to try to get a rattlesnake for Mr. Harriman. If he could catch one four feet long, so much the better. He had nothing in particular to do that day, and he would start off at once for Block Mountain, where it was understood there were always rattlesnakes to be found.
He did not, however, wish to go on such an expedition by himself, and so he called on Charlie Crawford, one of his boy friends, and asked him to go with him.
"Is it to be half and half?" asked Charlie.
Tom hesitated a little at this. He had not thought of dividing the reward.
"All right," said Charlie, laughing. "I don't want any of the money; I'll go for fun."
But Tom was too generous a fellow to consent to anything like that. "We will first get the snake," he said, "and then we will see about dividing the money. But we must hurry up, for I've got to stop at the house on my way to the mountain."
In an hour from this time the boys had begun the ascent of Block Mountain, which was about two miles from the village. They had not gone very far up the mountain-side before they came to a cabin standing by itself on a small level space. An elderly man, very roughly dressed, was sitting on a bench by the door.