“Dod rot your skin!” exclaimed Sneak, getting up and seizing Joe by the collar.

“Hang it, it wasn’t me! it was the snake!” said Joe, extricating his neck from his companion’s grasp.

“What’d you hit the sarpent for?”

“Why, I wanted to kill him.”

“Then why didn’t you help me to get it away from my neck?”

“You didn’t ask me,” said Joe, with something like ingenuousness, though with a most provoking application.

“I couldn’t speak!  The tarnation thing was squeezing my neck so tight I couldn’t say a word.  But I looked at you, and you might ’ave understood me.  Never mind, you’ll git a snake hold of you some of these days.”

“I’ll keep a sharp look out after this,” said Joe.  “But Sneak, I’ll swear now you were not born to be hung.”

“You be dod rot!” replied Sneak, leaping on the steed, and turning towards the river.

“I would have cut him off myself, Sneak,” said Joe, musing on the odd affair as they rode briskly along, “if I hadn’t been afraid of cutting your throat.  I knew you wasn’t born to be hung.”

“Ha! ha! ha! that was the tightest place that ever I was in,” said Sneak, regaining his good humour, and diverted at the strange occurrence.

“Didn’t he bite you?” asked Joe.

“No, a black snake can’t bite—­they havn’t got any fangs.  If it had been a rattlesnake or a viper, I’d been a gone chicken.  I don’t think I’ll ever leave my knife behind again, even if I wasn’t to go ten steps from home.  Dod—­my neck’s very sore.”

The companions continued the rest of the way in silence.  When they reached home, and returned the horses to the stable, they proceeded down the path to Roughgrove’s house to report their adventure.

Glenn and Mary, William and La-u-na, were seated under the spreading elm-tree, engaged in some felicitous conference, that produced a most pleasing animation in their features.

Mary immediately demanded of Joe a recital of his adventures that morning.  He complied without reluctance, and his hearers were frequently convulsed with laughter as he proceeded, for he added many embellishments not narrated by the author.  Sneak bore their merriment with stoical fortitude, and then laughed as heartily as themselves at his own recent novel predicament.

La-u-na asked Sneak if he had been bitten by any of the poisonous snakes.  Sneak of course replied in the negative, but at the same time desired to know the name of the plant that was used by the Indians with universal success when wounded by the fangs of the rattlesnake.  The girl told him it was the white plantain that grew in the prairies.

“I’ll go and get some right straight,” said Joe, “because I don’t know what moment I may be bitten.”

“Never mind it, Joe,” said Glenn, rising.  “We are now going to gather wild raspberries on the cliff south of and we want you and Sneak to assist us.”