blue, too, was misty like the blue
haze in the distance on a summer day. To see and admire it better he
reached out his hand and tried to pluck one of the flowers; then in
an instant he dropped his hand, as if he had been pricked by a thorn.
But there was no thorn and nothing to hurt him; he dropped his hand
only because he felt that he had hurt the flower. Moving a step back
he stared at it, and the flower seemed like a thing alive that
looked back at him, and asked him why he had hurt it.

"O, poor flower!" said Martin, and, coming closer he touched it
gently with his finger-tips; and then, standing on tiptoe, he
touched its petals with his lips, just as his mother had often and
often kissed his little hand when he had bruised it or pricked it
with a thorn.

Then, while still standing by the plant, on bringing his eyes down
to the ground he spied a great snake lying coiled up on a bed of
moss on the sunny side of the same tree where the plant was growing.
He remembered the dear little snake he had once made a friend of,
and he did not feel afraid, for he thought that all snakes must be
friendly towards him, although this was a very big one, thicker than
his arm and of a different colour. It was a pale olive-green, like
the half-dry moss it was lying on, with a pattern of black and brown
mottling along its back. It was lying coiled round and round, with
its flat arrow-shaped head resting on its coils, and its round
bright eyes fixed on Martin's face. The sun shining on its eyes made
them glint like polished jewels or pieces of glass, and when Martin
moved nearer and stood still, or when he drew back and went to this
side or that, those brilliant glinting eyes were still on his face,
and it began to trouble him, until at last he covered his face with
his hands. Then he opened his fingers enough to peep through them,
and still those glittering eyes were fixed on him.

[Illustration: ]

Martin wondered if the snake was vexed with him for coming there,
and why it watched him so steadily with those shining eyes.
"Will you please look some other way?" he said at last, but the
snake would not, and so he turned from it, and then it seemed to him
that everything was alive and watching him in the same intent
way--the passion-flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the trees,
the wide sky, the great shining sun. He listened, and there was no
sound in the wood, not even the hum of a fly or wild bee, and it was
so still that n