he took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the
"Account of Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested
that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that
time, towards the Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it,
and that the Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs
was a false show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen
to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course,
not being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,
though there was good Reason to think it was a Daemon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this
town early in the present century. After this there was a great
snake-hunt, in which very many of these venomous beasts were
killed,--one in particular, said to have been as big round as a stout
man's arm, and to have had no less than _forty_ joints to his
rattle,--indicating, according to some, that he had lived forty years,
but, if we might put any faith in the Indian tradition, that he had
killed forty human beings,--an idle fancy, clearly. This hunt, however,
had no permanent effect in keeping down the serpent population.
Viviparous creatures are a kind of specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones
only give their notes, as it were, for a future brood,--an egg being, so
to speak, a promise to pay a young one by-and-by, if nothing happen. Now
the domestic habits of the rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for
obvious reasons; but it is, no doubt, to all intents and purposes
oviparous. Consequently it has large families, and is not easy to kill
out.

In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of
Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.
A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by
the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a
rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the
almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove
immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she
was bitten.

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,
as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively
careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of inte