arkened.

"As I looked, I saw what he was holding in his hands."

"What was it--a dagger--a staff?"

"A serpent."

Renfrew could not repress an exclamation.

"Very large and striped. Its skin was like shot silk in the moonlight.
It writhed softly between his hands, and turned its flat head from side
to side. It seemed to be trying to bend down towards where I lay. Its
tongue shot out like a length of riband out of one of those wooden
winders that you buy in cheap shops. I should think its body was quite
five feet long, and its colour seemed to change as it turned about.
Sometimes it was pink, then it looked dull green and almost black. Once
it wriggled down so near to the ground that I could see two fangs in its
open mouth like hooks, and the roof of its mouth was flesh colour."

"How abominable!" said Renfrew, softly.

"I didn't feel it so at all," Claire said. "I wanted it to come to
me,--back into the grass where such things are safe. But the man
wouldn't let it go. He thrust it into his breast. He wanted to have his
hands free."

"Good God, Claire--what for? Did he--?"

She smiled at his sudden violence, which showed his interest.

"When the snake was safe, he drew out, still smiling and listening, a
little pipe that looked as if it were made of straw, very common and
dirty. He held it up to his black lips, and began to play very softly
and sleepily. Desmond, the tune he played was charmed. It was a tune
composed--for--for--"

She broke off.

"You know the Pied Piper had his tune," she said; "the rats had to
follow it. Well, this tune was for the serpents."

"To charm them you mean?"

"Wisely--dangerously--almost irresistibly, perhaps in time, Desmond,
quite, quite irresistibly. There is a music for all creatures, all
reptiles, birds,--everything that lives; this was for the snakes."

"Well, but, Claire, how did you know that?"

She looked at him with a sort of dull amusement and pity in her
half-shut eyes.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes."

"I knew it, because the tune charmed me, Desmond."

"Ah, you are acting! I half suspected it from the first," Renfrew
exclaimed almost roughly.

He sat up as a man who has been lying under a spell stirs when the spell
is broken. Now he knew that his pipe was out, and he felt for his
match-box. But Claire still kept her eyes fixed on him, and laid her
hand on his arm gently.

"No, I am not acting," she said. "The tune charmed me. You see I am a
woman; an