However, I was saved further embarrassment by our arriving at our scene of operations. Really I don’t know which of us was more quietly excited as we stood in front of the bank where the angry little prisoner churned his venom in the darkness. Eva, who had been given an illustrated natural history for a present the Christmas before, was evidently expecting a boa constrictor--that, or a beautiful serpent, such as a luridly pictured Bible sent her by a pious aunt had taught her to associate with the garden of Eden.
With almost as much caution as though Eva’s imaginations were likely to be realised, and some winged dragon snorting flame was ready to leap out upon us, I removed the stone and peered into the tiny dungeon, Eva standing at my side, her blue eyes serious with expectancy. Yes, my prisoner was still there! Apparently he had not moved since I had shut him in, and his small wicked eyes gleamed at me with concentrated hate out of the darkness. He showed no disposition to escape, so there was no difficulty in my using my glass pickle jar, as I had proposed to myself when I stole with it from the kitchen.
Placing its broad mouth in the entrance to the little cave, I banked it securely round with earth; Eva, meanwhile, an admiring, mystified spectator. Thus the adder had no choice but to stay where he was or to remove into the glass jar, the hospitality of which, however, he showed no disposition to accept. He still sat on, mystic, unmoving, making no sign. Eva and I watched him a long while in silence, and then at length, his immobility growing monotonous, I cut a stout twig from a neighbouring bush, and, pushing it through the soft earth at the side of the jar, poked him gently with it. Even then he would not stir, but his black tongue went in and out of his tiny jaws like black lightning. There was something quite pathetic in his miniature fury at this indignity being put upon him.
“My! but he is cross! Isn’t he, Daddy?” exclaimed Eva, peering with me at the angry little creature. Presently he moved farther into the darkness, away from the tormenting twig, but, as it could still reach him there, his patience at last became exhausted, and suddenly he had uncoiled himself and was gliding, with all the grace of his evil beauty, into the glass jar.