Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/94

72 alacrity. The snake puffed and hissed and struck, but the skunk never even hesitated. Holding the reptile down with its slim paws it nibbled off the threatening head, neatly skinned the squirming body, and before Mrs. Hurlbutt's delighted eyes ate it up. Then, without apparently noticing her at all, it went on up the hill until lost to sight among the hardhacks.

It would have been impossible to convince Miranda that the snake was nothing but a harmless puff-adder, and that, in spite of its bluffing ways, it had no fangs and never was known to bite. From that day on the skunk was envisaged in her mind as the guardian angel of the farm, and the edict went out that on no account was it to be molested. Not even when most of the bees from one of Mark's cherished swarms disappeared into its leather-lined interior, would Miranda permit any adverse action.

"Some skunk that!" jeered Mark. "You let it get away with bees an' boarders an' milk an' eggs, an' never say a word. I wisht you cared as much for your husband."

"I might, if he was as brave—an' good-looking," murmured Miranda.

It was the sweet influences of the month of June which settled the dispute. Jonas had been down in the sap-works, where the vast sugar-maples grew below the milk-house meadow. As he came back up the slope, the great golden moon of June was showing its rim over Pond Hill. Ahead of him he saw a familiar black-and-white shape moving