He was coming swiftly, evenly, carrying his gleaming head over a foot from the ground, and following hard upon the trail of the first snake.  He hit very near the smooth, flowing mark in the dust of the lane.  Here she had crossed.  Here he was about to cross when he caught sight of me.

For a startled instant he stiffened, threw himself on the defensive, and showed a white patch under his chin, an ugly, blazing light in his eye, and a peculiarly aggressive attitude that there was no mistaking.  I had seen this snake before.  I knew him.  He was the dragon of the swale.

Only pausing, he whirled, struck the track, and sped on, his round black body stretching from rut to rut of the lane.  A hundred feet beyond in the grass I saw his glittering head rise and sway with a swimming motion as he trailed the long, lithe beauty that was leading him this lightning race across the fields.

This was not the last time he crossed my path.  He never withstood me again; but he thwarted me several times.  Once as I was descending the slope I saw him gliding down from a low cedar.  The distressing cries of two chippies told me what he had been doing in the tree; I did not need to look at the half-dislodged nest.  Then and there I vowed to kill him, but from that moment I never set eyes on him again.  His evil work, however, went on.  In a clump of briers across the stream was the nest of a pair of redbirds that I was watching.  One day just before the young could fly they were carried off.  I knew who did it.  On the same side, up under the fence by the woods, a litter of rabbits was destroyed.  The snake killed them.  It was he, too, who ate the eggs of the bluebirds in the old apple-tree along the fence in the adjoining field.

There must be a dragon in the way, I suppose—­in the way even of nature study.  There are unpleasant, perhaps unnecessary, and evil creatures—­snakes!—­in the fields and woods, which we must be willing to meet and tolerate for the love within us.  Tick-seeds, beggar-needles, mud, mosquitos, rain, heat, hawks, and snakes haunt all our paths, hindering us sometimes, though never really blocking the way.

But the dragon in the swale—­ought I to tolerate him?  No.  There are moments when I should be glad to kill him, yet I doubt if the swale would be quite so wild and thrilling a spot if I knew there was no dragon to meet me as I crossed.  But the redbirds, bluebirds, rabbits?  I see no shrinking in their numbers because of the snake.  A few of them breed as they always have along the swale.  There are worse enemies than the dragon, though he is bad enough.