“And in the midst of the murky clouds, on the mountain-top, stood Xyntli, beautiful exceedingly, in her iridescent, gray veil, with her glittering, red-gold hair. Swaying lightly on the shoulders of her servant-winds, waving her arms and crying, she urged on her fiery snakes, that were to restore her kingdom to her as she would have it—clean, smooth, unbroken;—the pattern of a perfect mountain! “But the people in the village saw the terror, not the beauty; and they thought only of their flight from it. “They huddled the babies and the old people who couldn’t walk and their few poor possessions onto the ox-carts. Some of them tried to drive the spotted pigs before them; and any one who has tried to drive _one_ pig (a plain one at that) can imagine how much confusion it made when there were dozens and dozens. And it’s not to be wondered at, that the aunts and the grandmother didn’t count correctly. So they didn’t miss the Bee Baby until they were far away; and the body of Xyntli’s hideous snake lay stretched across the blackened hollow where the little huts had stood in the green grove. [Illustration: THEY THOUGHT ONLY OF THEIR FLIGHT ] “There is a curious thing about a snake. It has a habit of slipping out of its skin, and squirming away, leaving the old one behind, looking quite like itself. “Xyntli’s snakes were unusual in many ways; but in this they certainly did something very like the rest of their tribe. When they had gone down the mountains and filled up the hollows with their bodies, their fiery hearts seemed to die out of them where they lay. One might think they were asleep, or dead; but I believe it was only their cast-off skins they left behind, while the real snakes stole back into the mountain, to be ready when Xyntli wanted them again.” “I believe it, too; that’s what they did,” said Pat. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be there always, when she called,” agreed Phyllisy. “It seems so to me,” said the Princess. Then she took up the story again: “At last Xyntli stopped her wild motion and looked down on her mountain. “The snakes had done their work well this time. There were no hollows left, and no green thing but one slender spur of forest, like a finger pointing up the slope, and that was hardly worth noticing. “The smoke was thin now, and blue. Xyntli stood, swaying softly on the mountain-top. Then she sank slowly, drawing her veil after her. Now she was nearly gone; now, only a gleam of her red hair flickered against the sky; now—she was quite gone— “When—suddenly she shot up, straight, towering above the cone, and flung a long fold of her veil wide over the land; and from it fell a shower of fine powder, soft as snow, that filled all the cracks and crevices and covered the horrid bodies of the snakes, and choked every green thing left in its track. “Then—as suddenly—Xyntli vanished! and in her hollow mountain, slept once more.”