mingled with involuntary alarm.

They had reached a secluded corner of the garden where the sunshine fell
in a network of light through the overshadowing foliage of a group of
tall fig-trees, which cast quite a semi-gloom in contrast to the glare
without. On one side was a thick pomegranate hedge. The cause of
Violet's terror became unpleasantly manifest in the shape of a hideous
black head rearing itself up from the ground. It was followed by the
gliding sinuous body of a huge snake.

Shriek after shriek arose from Violet's lips.

"It's coming straight at us!" she screamed, and mastering an impulse to
faint, she turned and fled from the spot as hard as she could run.

It certainly was coming straight at them, and that with a velocity and
determination abnormal to its kind. Another peculiarity was that it
came on in a straight, smooth glide, without a writhe, without even a
wrathful hiss. In fact, the reptile's behaviour, to anybody but a brace
of badly frightened women, was singular to a degree.

"It's only a rinkhaals," cried Marian, bravely standing her ground.
"Lend me your Sunshade, Violet."

But the latter was already a hundred yards off, where, half ashamed of
her panic, half secure in the distance she had covered, she turned to
see what would happen. Suddenly a sound of suppressed laughter reached
Marian's ears. It seemed to come from the pomegranate hedge.
Simultaneously the snake came to an abrupt standstill, and lay
motionless.

Any misgivings Marian may have felt vanished on the instant. She knew
that laugh, and recognising it became alive to something which in her
not unnatural alarm had escaped her before. The snake was as dead as a
pickled herring, and there was a noose of thin twine round its neck.

"Chris! How can you?" she cried. "You have nearly frightened Violet to
death!"

"Have I?" laughed Christopher Selwood, emerging from his hiding-place.
"No, no! That won't do. Why, wasn't it Miss Avory who was sticking out
the other day that no snake in this country could scare her? Ho, ho,
ho!"

The speaker was a well-built, good-looking man of middle age, with a
heavy brown beard, just beginning to show a streak of grey here and
there, and keen, fun-loving eyes. His face was tanned and burnt,
likewise his hands, which latter were rough and horny through much hard
manual labour. He was dressed in cord trousers and a flannel shirt, and
carried his jacket under his arm.

"Ho, ho, h