They
still sang "Pull for the Shore," but faintly, feebly. They stared hard
at the basket and the cane. Alethea-Belle stood back, with a curious
expression upon her white face; very swiftly she flicked open the lid
of the basket. Silence fell on the scholars.
Out of the basket, quite slowly and stealthily, came the head of a
snake, a snake well known to the smallest child--known and dreaded.
The flat head, the lidless, baleful eyes, the grey-green, diamond-
barred skin of the neck were unmistakable.
"It's a rattler!" shrieked one of the rebels.
They sprang back; the other children rose, panic-stricken. The
schoolmarm spoke very quietly--
"Don't move! The snake will not hurt any of you."
As she spoke she flicked again the lid of the basket. It fell on the
head of the serpent. Alethea-Belle touched the horror, which withdrew.
Then she picked up the basket, secured the lid, and spoke to the
huddled-up, terrified crowd--
"You tried to scare me, didn't you, and I have scared you." She
laughed pleasantly, but with a faint inflection of derision, as if she
knew, as she did, that the uncivilised children of the foothills, like
their fathers, fear nothing on earth so much as rattlers and--
ridicule.
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