Page:Mistress Madcap (1937).pdf/119

 At last as she stood perfectly motionless, the facts of the case flashed over her. The snake must have crawled into the cabin, and the door subsequently having been closed, finding itself caught, it had found a hole in the fireplaces and had gone to sleep for the winter. The furious heat of Mehitable's fire had roused it and forth it had come in search of food. Finding the trencher, there, it had naturally resented Mehitable's unexpected appearance, and now it was ready to give battle.

She edged cautiously along the wall to the door, which she tried with trembling fingers. It held firm, though she had hoped against hope it might not, and for the first time she cried out. The utter horror of it struck her. She was alone and locked in with a rattlesnake!

But the snake did not move from its place before the fire. Gradually, it dawned upon Mehitable that as long as she remained quiet, the snake would, too.

The fire blazed up merrily. After a while the food, reheated by the leaping flames, began to send forth tantalizing odors. Mehitable looked hungrily and desperately around for a pole or something similar to try to draw the trencher toward her; but at her first movement the snake lifted its head and rattled its warning so spitefully that the girl, terrified, desisted.

Once she thought of attempting to reach her bunk which, raised from the floor, would offer her protection; but this thought was instantly followed by the memory of what her father had once told her—that snakes travel in pairs and that after killing one deadly snake,