y can't I look with you?" I asked, wanting to study more of his
methods, but he squelched me by answering:

"You look whole lot; no see anything."

I would have given him a good piece of my mind had he not suddenly
disappeared; returning soon with his usual smile and saying:

"Come."

Single file, as before, we pushed into the breast-high grass, and the
walking was easy. Once we crossed a patch of oozy turf from which arose
a score of jack-snipe; again we skirted a drying pond whose boggy edges
were the hunting ground of marsh hens. Yet other trails could be read
here: deer, wildcat, raccoon, and innumerable wee things. And here, too,
around the "bonnet" leaves, the silent moccasin lay coiled, so it was
well to step with caution in a place like this.

A wound by the cotton-mouth moccasin, if treated properly, may not
result in death. Like other viperine bites, however, it so affects the
surrounding flesh that blood poisoning may follow days after the first
crisis has been passed. Yet, even with this two-fold menace lurking in
its fangs, it is not the most feared of Florida snakes. Preeminent in
that capacity stands the diamond-back rattler, largest of the world's
venomous species and second to none in point of deadliness. Smilax
insisted--on I do not know what authority--that more dangerous than
either of these is the beautiful little coral snake, _elaps fulvius_,
whose victim becomes ravingly insane and invariably dies. That he
possessed some uncanny knowledge of the creature must be admitted
because of its close relationship to the Cobra-de-Capello, of Asiatic
fame, whose poison, we know, flies directly to the nerve centers and
almost entirely ignores the tissue. Four days later I had good reason to
remember this.

"Are there many snakes hereabouts?" I asked.

"Winter, not much; summer, heap."

However, at that very moment he held his hand back to stop me, then
beckoned me forward.

"Look!" He was pointing tensely ahead of us, moving his arm leftward and
indicating a circle of perhaps thirty feet in diameter.

Whatever it was, I could see the tops of the grass shake as their stems
were slightly jostled by this unknown creature's progress, which
continued with incredible speed and was circling back toward us. Then,
with a slightly swishing sound as its body glided through the dry grass,
that friend of Florida woodsmen--the king snake--passed before our feet
like a brownish-green streak.

"Rattler! You wat