ing blows with
the stout club, and with rage in every feature. The black-snake,
checked in its course, turned with the constrictor's instinct and
sprang at the boy, whipping its strong coils about one of its
assailant's legs and rearing its head aloft to a level with his face.
The boy but struck and gasped and stumbled over some obstruction, and,
somehow, the snake was wrenched away, and then there was another rush
at it, another rain of blows, and it was hit as had been its mate, and
lay twisting with a broken back. The man dashed through the creek and
came upon the scene with a great stick in his hand, but its use was not
required. The only labor which devolved upon him was to tear away from
his quarry the boy who was possessed of a spirit of rage and vengeance
beyond all reasoning. Upon the heaving, tossing thing, so that he
would have been fairly in its coils had it possessed longer any power,
he leaped, striking fiercely and screaming out all the fearful terms he
knew--what would have been the wildest of all abandonment of profanity
had he but acquired the words for such performance. His father caught
him by the arm, and he struggled with him. It was simply a young
madman. Carried across the creek and held in bonds for a brief period,
he suddenly burst out sobbing, and then went to inspect the ravished
nest where the two old birds hovered mourningly about, and where the
remaining nestlings seemed dead at first, though they subsequently
recovered, so gruesomely had the fascination of their natural enemy
affected them!

What happened then? What happens when any father and mother have
occasion to consider the matter of a son, a child, bone of their bone
and flesh of their flesh, who has transgressed some rule they have set
up for him wisely, thoughtfully, but with no provision for emotional or
extraordinary contingencies, because it would be useless, since he
could not comprehend exceptions. They took him to the house. The
father looked at him queerly, but with an expression that was far
removed from anger on his face, and his mother took the young man aside
and washed him, and put on another hickory shirt, and told him that his
sparrows would raise a pretty good family after all, and that it
wouldn't be so hard for the old birds to feed three as four.

Early that same evening a six-foot father strolled over to the place of
the nearest settler, a mile or so away, and the two men walked back,
talking togeth