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190 As we stood looking at the dangerous creature our chief feeling was that of wonder that Binnahan had not been bitten, for she had been a dozen times in and out of the tree that morning. A large pile of firewood, however, was stacked near the fig-tree, and the supposition that the snake had but lately glided out of it to look for its breakfast appeared the most probable solution of the poor child's merciful escape. I did not exactly see how the enemy was to be persuaded to "come and be killed" without endangering the bystanders, but the ostler soon settled that point by a blow from a long pole, knocking from the tree both branch and snake together; and the mistress of the house, remembering her brother's narrow escape, would depute to none the office of executioner, but revenged all family injuries past and present by herself beheading the outlaw as soon as it reached the ground.

A hair-breadth escape was related to me by a poor neighbour who, in putting her hand to the bottom of a basket in the dark, touched "something that felt like a bunch of black-puddings," which proved to be a sleeping snake. On another occasion the same woman observed the head of a black snake wriggling its way into her wooden hut through a knot hole in one of the boards. She rushed out and killed it at once, thus saving her baby, whose cradle was close to the aperture, so that the snake would most probably have curled itself up by the sleeping infant, for the sake of the warmth, had not the mother providentially noticed its attempted entrance.

I used sometimes to fancy that I had found the track of a snake upon the sandy path that led to our house, but my thinking so only proved my ignorance of the