"Why, it's a worse poison than the snake-bite, and it kills the snake-poison 'cause it's stronger. Wherever the snakes grow, there the rattlesnake-weed grows. The snakes know it themselves, and when they fight and bite each other they go and eat the weed and it cures 'em. Here's some of it," she said, going to the wall of the room which was all hung round with dried bunches of various herbs--"here's some I got over on Poganuc Mountain, if you ever should want any." "Oh, I hope I never shall," said Dolly. "Nabby, only think! What if there had been a snake in those bushes!" "Well, you can always know," said Mis' Persis, "if you hear somethin' in the bushes jest like a locust, sharp and sudden--why, you'd better look afore you set your foot down. But we don't hev no rattlesnakes round this way. I've beat all these lots through and never seen tail of one. This 'ere ain't one o' their places; over to Poganuc Mountain, now, a body has to take care how they step." "Do you suppose, Mis' Persis," said Dolly, after a few moments of grave thought, "do you suppose God made that weed grow on purpose to cure rattlesnake bites?" "Of course he did," said Mis' Persis, as decidedly as if she had been a trained theologian, "that's what rattlesnake-weed was made fer; any fool can see that." "It seems to me," said Dolly, "that it would have been better not to have the snakes, and then people wouldn't be bit at all--wouldn't it?" "Oh, we don't know everything," said Mis' Persis; "come to that, there's a good many things that nobody knows what they's made fer. But the Indians used to say there was some cure grew for every sickness if only our eyes was opened to see it, and I expect it's so." "Come, Dolly," said Nabby, "the sun is gettin' pretty low; I must hurry home to get supper." Just then the bell of the distant meeting-house gave three tolling strokes, whereat all the three stopped talking and listened intently. Of all the old Puritan customs none was more thrillingly impressive than this solemn announcement of a death, and this deliberate tolling out of the years of a finished life. It was a sound to which every one, whether alone or in company, at work or in play, stopped to listen, and listened with a nervous thrill of sympathy. "I wonder who that is?" said Nabby. "Perhaps it's Lyddy Bascom," said Mis' Persis, "she's been down with typhus fever." The bell now was rapidly tolling one, two, three, four, and all the company counted eagerly up to sixteen, seventeen, when Mis' Persis interposed. "No, 'taint Lyddy; it's goin' on," and they counted and counted, and still the bell kept tolling till it had numbered eighty. "It's old Granny Moss," said Mis' Persis decisively; "she's ben lyin' low some time. Well, she's in heaven now; the better for her." "Ah, I'm glad she's in heaven," said Dolly, with a shivering sigh; "she's all safe now."