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 splashed surface of the pool in front of him. There was something inexpressibly menacing in the cold glitter of those bead-like eyes; and yet, terrible as was his aspect, the snake was undeniably a creature of real and almost marvelous beauty.

A splendid specimen of his race, though not as large as the diamond rattler sometimes becomes, he measured, from the tip of his sharp-nosed, arrow-shaped head to the last of his ten rattles, an inch more than five feet, while the girth of his massive trunk at its thickest part was fully eight inches. The ground-color of his body was a lustrous, almost iridescent grayish-green, and along his broad, arched back a chain of black-brown, diamond-shaped patches stretched from the base of the head, merging finally with the dusky olive of the thick, black-ringed tail. In the coloration of his mailed body there was a richness of tint which could not fail to compel admiration; yet all sense and realization of this beauty of color and pattern were obliterated instantly by a single glance at the wide, flat head and face. These seemed instinct with wickedness and cruelty—hideous, revolting, utterly beyond description.

It was not due to accident that the rattlesnakewas lying framed in the queer white disc which formed the only spot of sunlight beneath the big magnolia. He had chosen the spot purposely be-