"No! stop up here and wait! Thou, too, darling White Elf! I will come back directly." And she drove back the lambs, which had tried to follow, and which now, bleating, looked wistfully after their mistress. With great agility the practised girl sprang down the ravine; now holding fast to the tough shrubs, spurge-olives, and yellow willow; now boldly leaping from rock to rock. The loose stones broke and the fragments came rattling after her. As she merrily jumped after the rolling pebbles, she suddenly heard a sharp and threatening hiss from below. Before she could turn, a great copper-brown snake, which had no doubt been disturbed from sunning itself on a stone, coiled itself up, ready to dart at her naked feet. The child was alarmed; her knees trembled, and screaming loudly, she called: "Adalgoth, help! help!" A clear voice immediately replied to this cry of fear with the words, "Alaric! Alaric!" which sounded like a battle-cry. The bushes on the right creaked and cracked; stones rolled down the slope, and, swift as an arrow, a slender boy in a rough wolf-skin flew between the hissing snake and the affrighted maiden. He hurled his strong Alpine stick like a spear, and with so true an aim that the small head of the snake was transfixed to the ground. Its long body twined convulsively round the deadly shaft. "Gotho, thou art not wounded?" "No, thanks to thee, thou hero!" "Then let me say the snake-charm before the viper ceases to struggle; it will ban all its fellows for three leagues around." And lifting the three first fingers of his right hand, the boy repeated the ancient saying: "Woe! thou wolf-worm, Wriggle wildly! Bite the bushes, Poisonous panting: Men and maidens, Hurt thou shalt not. Down, black devil, Venomous viper, Down and die now! High o'er the heads Of scaly-bright serpents Steppeth the race of the glorious Goths!" CHAPTER IV. As he finished speaking, and was bending to examine the snake, the girl suddenly placed the wreath which she had made upon his curly auburn hair. "Hail, hero and helper! Look! the victor's wreath was ready for thee. Ah! how well the blue flowers become thee!" And she clapped her hands joyfully. "Thy foot is bleeding!" said Adalgoth anxiously; "let me suck the wound. If the poisonous snake has bitten thee!" "It was only a sharp stone. Thou wouldst better like to die thyself?" "For thee, Gotho, how gladly! But the poison is harmless in the mouth. Now let me wash thy wound. I have still some vinegar and water left in my gourd. And then I will put sage-leaves upon it, and healing endive."