The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-07-07

1 away to his mothers relatives in South America.
 It was a wild life that Dick Vennei had lived after that-a life which would not bear close inspection--and one day he had mounted his faorite horse and gone riding off, with a cople of officers after him, who, rumor said, took good care not to catch him. Now he ap- peared in Rockland again, bringing a wild horse of the Pampas with him and belt around his waist in which were enough gold and diamonds to serve him for a long journey.
 q wonder will she bite at IS as she did at S?" unused Dick, barring his wrist and looking at the white scars where the two small, sharp teeth had struck when she flashed at him with her eyes sparkling and bright as the gems sew ed in his belt "A game little devil, that. That's a lilly worth noosing.'
 Elsie professed to be pleased at hav- ing Dick home again; and Dudley Ven- ner. who had grown almost desperate, welcomed any change in the current of daugter's life that might save her from the Frightening. wild paroxysms of dangerous mental exultation or tn' sullen perversions of disposition from which some fearful calamity might come to herself or others.
 The boy had grown into a handsome, dashing young man of the Spanish type, and to work off his superfluous anil nal spirits he took mad rides about the country on the half-tamed steed of the wind blown plains. Elsie fas- cinated him in a manner-not a wholly agreeable one--and puzzled him. However, with an eye to her fortune, he said to himself, I'll tame her after we are married" and tried making downright love to her, but with in- different success.
 They were sitting alone one day and Elsie wore around her neck her singular ornament the golden torque which she had worn at the party Dick was seized with a desire for examining 1t, and reAched out his hand to touch it. Elsie threw back her head, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing down so that 1t seemed too Dick that he could see her head actually flatten- ing itself. He stared at her in mom- entary fear, and daredevil as he was, he did not dare repeat his attempt.
 What's the matter with that girlT' Dick asked himself. Blessed if she don't scare me sometimes And at the moment he felt the two white scars on his arm burn as they had done the day the doctor burned them with the stick of gray caustic.
 For one thing" he decided to him self later. she's in love with that schoolmaster up at the institute" And he poured out upon the unconscious head of Bernard Langdon some choice Spanish explosives, a. began at once to consider the removal of this stumb- ling block in the road of his ambition. The Spanish half of him plotted craftily and soon murderously; but his New England half added a caution and a calm consideration of results. which the Latin alone would have scorned to consider.
 At the very moment that one deadly enemy of Bernard was thus plotting against him. the school teacher was staring spell-bound into the diamond eyes of another enemy--enemy not only of him, but of everything that breathed the breath of lfe--a great rattlesnake coiled to strike. He had wandered up "The Mountain" and had reached the ledge of evil name. There he found the mouth of a small cave and looked in. His look was returned by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small sharp. cold He stood fixed. struck into stil ness. staring back with dila- ting pupils and a sudden numbness of fear that cannot move, as in the ter TOT of dreams. There rang through his ears the long, loud, stinglng whir as the reptile shook his many jolnted rattles and gathered his heavy loops for the fatal stroke. Nature was before man with his artificial anaes- thetics; the erotalus paralyzes before it strikes.
 He waited in a trance. helpless. as if