Page:Thrummy Cap and the ghaist (2).pdf/24

 24 and working itself into exertion by a kind of sluggish motion. ‘ What I felt,’ he con- tinues, ‘on seeing two fellow creatures ex- posed by my ordsrs to this fiend, I must leave to the readers imagination. ’ But to his inexpressible joy they were drawn up unhurt, but almost lifeless with fear. Hay was then thrown down on the lighted tor- dies which they had dropped. When the flames had expired, a large snake was found scorched and dead, but no money. Mr Forbes supposed that the owner had carried away the treasure with him, but forgotten to liberate the snake which he had placed there as its keeper. Whether the snake was venemous or not, he has omitted to mention, or perhaps to observe ; if he were not, it would he no defence for the treasure; and if it were, it seems to have been too torpid with inanition, con- finement and darkness, to excercise its powers of destruction. Where the popular beieif prevails that snakes are the guard- ians of hidden treasure, and where the art of charming serpants is commonly practis- ed, there is no difficulty in supposing that they who conceal a treasure, (as is often done under the oppressive government of the East) would sometimes place it under such protection. FINIS.

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