“You’d better call the dog away from that snake, Car’lyn May,” he said in a strangely husky voice. “We’ll be going.” The little girl approved. “You surely don’t want to eat it, Prince,” she told her canine friend. “Snakes aren’t meat, nor even fish. Are they, Uncle Joe?” “Humph! what d’you s’pose they are, then?” he demanded. “Why, they’re—they’re just insects, aren’t they? Not even dogs should eat them,” and she urged Prince away from the snake. The muscles of the “insect” still twitched, and its tail snapped about. Prince had his doubts as to whether it was really dead or was “playing possum.” “Is it true, Uncle Joe,” Carolyn May asked, “that snakes can’t really die till the sun goes down? You see, it still wiggles. Do—do you s’pose it’s suffering?” “I guess Prince fixed Mr. Snake, all right, at the first bite,” returned Mr. Stagg. “He’s dead. That old idea about the critters holding the spark of life till after sunset is just a superstition. We can safely call that fellow dead and leave him.” Joseph Stagg and the little girl went on across the stepping-stones, while Prince splashed through the water. Carolyn May was thinking about Miss Amanda Parlow, and she believed her Uncle Joe was, too. “Uncle Joe,” she said, “would that bad old snake have stung Miss Amanda?” “Huh? No; I reckon not,” admitted Mr. Stagg absent-mindedly. “Blacksnakes don’t bite. A big one like that can squeeze some.” “But you were scared of it—like me and Prince. And for Miss Amanda,” said Carolyn May, very much in earnest. “I guess ’most everybody is scared by the sight of a snake, Car’lyn May.” “But you were scared for Miss Amanda’s sake—just the same as I was,” repeated the little girl decidedly. “Well?” he growled, looking away, troubled by her insistence. “Then you don’t hate her, do you?” the child pursued. “I’m glad of that, Uncle Joe, for I like her very much. I think she’s a beautiful lady.” To this Uncle Joe said nothing. He was not to be drawn, badger-like, to the mouth of his den. What he really thought of Miss Amanda he kept to himself. “Anyway,” sighed Carolyn May at last, “she invited me to come to see her, now she’s home from nursing. And, if you haven’t got any objection, Uncle Joe, I’m going to see her.” “Go ahead,” said Mr. Stagg. “I haven’t anything to say against it.” But Carolyn May was far from satisfied by this permission. Child as she was, somehow she had gained an appreciation of the tragedy in the lives of Joseph Stagg and Amanda Parlow. That cry the man had uttered when he sprang to Miss Parlow’s aid had been wrenched from the very depths of his being. Nor had Miss Amanda’s emotion been stirred only by the sight of a snake that was already dead when she had first seen it. Carolyn May had felt the woman’s hand tremble; there had been tears flooding her eyes when she kissed the little girl.