coming swiftly, evenly, carrying his gleaming head over a foot from
the ground, and following hard upon the trail of the first snake. He hit
very near the smooth, flowing mark in the dust of the lane. Here she had
crossed. Here he was about to cross when he caught sight of me.

For a startled instant he stiffened, threw himself on the defensive, and
showed a white patch under his chin, an ugly, blazing light in his eye,
and a peculiarly aggressive attitude that there was no mistaking. I had
seen this snake before. I knew him. He was the dragon of the swale.

Only pausing, he whirled, struck the track, and sped on, his round black
body stretching from rut to rut of the lane. A hundred feet beyond in the
grass I saw his glittering head rise and sway with a swimming motion as he
trailed the long, lithe beauty that was leading him this lightning race
across the fields.

This was not the last time he crossed my path. He never withstood me
again; but he thwarted me several times. Once as I was descending the
slope I saw him gliding down from a low cedar. The distressing cries of
two chippies told me what he had been doing in the tree; I did not need to
look at the half-dislodged nest. Then and there I vowed to kill him, but
from that moment I never set eyes on him again. His evil work, however,
went on. In a clump of briers across the stream was the nest of a pair of
redbirds that I was watching. One day just before the young could fly they
were carried off. I knew who did it. On the same side, up under the fence
by the woods, a litter of rabbits was destroyed. The snake killed them. It
was he, too, who ate the eggs of the bluebirds in the old apple-tree along
the fence in the adjoining field.

There must be a dragon in the way, I suppose--in the way even of nature
study. There are unpleasant, perhaps unnecessary, and evil
creatures--snakes!--in the fields and woods, which we must be willing to
meet and tolerate for the love within us. Tick-seeds, beggar-needles, mud,
mosquitos, rain, heat, hawks, and snakes haunt all our paths, hindering us
sometimes, though never really blocking the way.

But the dragon in the swale--ought I to tolerate him? No. There are
moments when I should be glad to kill him, yet I doubt if the swale would
be quite so wild and thrilling a spot if I knew there was no dragon to
meet me as I crossed. But the redbirds, bluebirds, rabbits? I see no
shrinking in their numbers because of the snake. A few o