tanding helpless,
with her hands clasped and eyeballs glaring. Thoroughly alarmed, he
dashed towards the gate. At the same moment the voice of a child was
heard:--

"Oh, look!--look 'ere, nuss, ain't I cotched a pritty ting--such a
pritty ting!"

Springing through the gate, Dobson beheld Master Junkie, staggering up
the track like a drunken man, with one hand clasped tight round the
throat of a snake whose body and tail were twining round the chubby arm
of its captor in a vain effort at freedom, while its forked tongue
darted out viciously. It was at once recognised as one of the most
deadly snakes in the country.

"Ain't it a booty?" cried Junkie, confronting Dobson, and holding up his
prize like the infant Hercules, whom he very much resembled in all
respects.

Dobson, seizing the child's hand in his own left, compressed it still
tighter, drew his hunting-knife, and sliced off the reptile's head, just
as Edwin Brook with his wife and daughter, attracted by the nurse's
outcry, rushed from the cottage to the rescue. Scholtz and George Dally
at the same time ran out respectively from stable and kitchen.

Mrs Scholtz had gone into a hysterical fit of persistent shrieking and
laughter, which she maintained until she saw that her darling was saved;
then, finishing off with a prolonged wail, she fell flat on the grass in
a dead faint.

Junkie at the same moment, as it were, took up the cry. To be thus
robbed of his new-found pet would have tried a better temper than his.
Without a moment's hesitation he rushed at Frank Dobson and commenced
violently to kick his shins, while he soundly belaboured his knees with
the still wriggling tail of the poor snake.

"What a blessing!" exclaimed Mrs Brook, grasping Dobson gratefully by
the hand.

"What a mercy!" murmured Gertie, catching up the infant Hercules and
taking him off to the cottage.

"What a rumpus!" growled Dally, taking himself off to the kitchen.

Scholtz gave no immediate expression to his feelings, but, lifting his
better half from the grass, he tucked her under one of his great arms,
and, with the muttered commentary, "zhe shrieckz like von mad zow,"
carried her off to his own apartment, where he deluged her with cold
water and abuse till she recovered.

"Your arrival has created quite a sensation, Dobson," said Edwin Brook,
with a smile, as they walked up to the house.

"Say, rather, it was opportune," said Mrs Brook; "but for your prompt
way of u