will gather them if I do not," continued
she, "and she will never know how much I love her. All little children
pick strawberries for themselves, and I never heard of one being bitten
by a snake. If I pick them for my mother instead of myself, I don't
believe God will let them hurt me."

While thus meditating, she had reached the fence, and stepping on the
lower rails, she peeped over into the deep, green patch. As the wind
waved the grass to and fro, she caught glimpses of the reddening
berries, and her cheeks glowed with excitement. They were so thick, and
looked so rich and delicious! She would keep very near the fence, and if
a snake should crawl near her, she could get upon the topmost rails, and
it could not reach her there. One jump, and the struggle was over. She
plunged in a sea of verdure, while the strawberries glowed like coral
beneath. They hung in large, thick clusters, touching each other, so
that it would be an easy thing to fill her bucket before the sun went
down. She would not pick the whole clusters, because some were green
still, and she had heard her mother say, that it was a waste of God's
bounty, and a robbery of those who came afterwards, to pluck and destroy
unripe fruit. Several times she started, thinking she heard a rustling
in the leaves, but it was only the wind whispering to them as it passed.
She stained her cheeks and the palms of her hands with the crimson
juice, thinking it would make her mother smile, resolving to look at
herself in the water as she returned.

Her bucket, which was standing quietly on the ground, was almost full;
she was stooping down, with her sun-bonnet pushed back from her glowing
face, to secure the largest and best berries which she had yet seen,
when she _did_ hear a rustling in the grass very near, and looking
round, there was a large, long snake, winding slowly, carefully towards
the bucket, with little gleaming eyes, that looked like burning glass
set in emerald. It seemed to glow with all the colors of the rainbow, so
radiant it was in yellow, green and gold, striped with the blackest jet.
For one moment, Helen stood stupefied with terror, fascinated by the
terrible beauty of the object on which she was gazing. Then giving a
loud, shrill shriek, she bounded to the fence, climbed over it, and
jumped to the ground with a momentum so violent that she fell and rolled
several paces on the earth. Something cold twined round her feet and
ankles. With a gasp of de