a grouse was plucked and
broiled with much ado, and never was greater feast. And, the meal
over, he produced a cigar and--which was not really good form for the
woods--lay on the grass and smoked it, looking at her and talking
nonsense.

She sat upon a log and delighted in the fragrance and the light, and
the droning sounds and bird-cries, and the new world of it to her. All
at once, her gaze became fixed upon some object a little distance away.
She reached out her hand to him appealingly.

"What is that?"

He rose and looked where she pointed.

Years of decay had made of the trunk of a fallen tree but a long ridge
of crumbling, brown chips, and, upon this ridge, where the sun streamed
down hotly, lay something coiled in a black mass, and there was a flat,
hideous head resting upon it all with beady eyes which seemed, to leer.

Harlson looked at it carelessly.

"Big one, isn't it?" he said.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"What is it, you small ignoramus! It's a blacksnake and a monster. It
is one of the dreads of the small life of the wood, and it was one of
the dreads of my youth, and its days are numbered."

He reached for his gun, then checked himself.

"Shoot it."

She picked up the little rifle and raised it to her shoulder, as calmly
as any Leather-Stocking in the land.

The report came like a whip-crack, and up from the dead log leaped a
great writhing mass, which coiled and twisted and thrashed about, and
finally lay still.

Harlson walked up and examined what he called the "remains." Half the
serpent's ugly head had been torn away by the bullet.

"It was a great shot! 'And the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head!'" he quoted. "Egad, you've done it with a vengeance, my
huntress! And you are a markswoman among many, and thy price is above
rubies! Hooray!"

She informed him, with much dignity, that she never missed such
monsters as were blacksnakes, and that her undoubted skill with the
rifle was due to the quality of the tutor she had owned, and, at the
same time, would he mind moving to some other place to finish his
cigar, for the sight of the dead monster was not a pleasant thing?

And so was accomplished the woman's first feat with the gun; but on
that same day, before they had returned to camp, she had slain, at a
fair distance, a grouse which, when flushed, had sailed away with lofty
contempt for but a score of yards, and, alighting upon a limb close
beside the body of a tree,