because I was always listening and silent myself, and I have learnt a little more to-day. What he said was something like this: 'Common English viper, found in a tool-house, quite dead.' 'Don't be too sure of that, my friend,' thinks I. About half grown,' he went on, 'belonging to the order of venomous serpents, with poisonfangs.' 'Quite right, old chap, I'll prove it presently,' I added, to myself.

"He took hold of me with his fingers and I didn't bite him, for I was shamming dead, and vipers are first-rate actors, I can tell you. He placed me before him on a board, between a green-finch that he had stuffed and a stag-beetle that he had been trying to kill, but the poor insect was still alive, and struggled feebly, and he bent over me, still muttering: 'Would look well in the case of butcher-birds, with a bird's beak through him. Pickling him would save a lot of trouble though, and he would not look amiss in a bottle either. Or stop,-his skeleton would be an interesting study; boil him down, that's it, boil him down.' He pulled a string that hung down. from the wall, and in a minute or two a woman came into the room, short and stout, with a very red face. 'Cook,' said he, 'I want a clean saucepan to boil a viper in, and a place for it on the kitchen fire.'

"The woman grew redder than ever, until you would think that she carried some of the fire inside her, and she answered, 'I ain't a-going to leave off getting the dinner ready, to boil vipers, which is what I never undertook to do, nor you never named it as one of the duties of my place, sir.'"

"And what did the naturalist do then?" inquired V. "He did something that taught me a lesson in natural history," replied the Viper; "I found out that men have poison-noses, just as we have poison-teeth."

66

That is not true, really," Harry interrupted; "men have no poison in their noses, and you are making a mistake."

"Am I indeed? At all events I saw this man put the

poison into his nose out of a little box, while he was considering what he should say; and then all in a moment he sneezed some of it into my face and eyes! It pierced me like powdered fire, or like the little grains called pepper, that are sometimes put in the garden to keep slugs away from delicate plants. I could not pretend to be dead any longer, for the fiery torment made me wriggle violently. Then the woman screamed and

R

ran away, and the man ran after her, saying that he only wanted a pair of tongs to take hold of the live viper, and the last I heard was the woman's voice calling out, ‘I gives notice to leave in a month!'

"I had wriggled off the board and had fallen on the ground, and the shock of the fall stunned me for a moment; then I remembered that this was my one chance of escape, for the naturalist would very soon return, and I glided as fast as I could out of the room, and out of a window that was fortunately open in the next room, and hid myself in a box of mignonette. I did not dare to move until all was still at night, and then, though I was not far from the ground, I had the greatest possible difficulty in getting down. However, I managed it at last, and caught a field-mouse for my supper."

"I am glad you escaped," said Harry, quite sincerely, although he did not like vipers.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE WEASEL'S WORKSHOP.

"W, a WEASEL, crept out in the night."

ARRY thought that he had never seen a prettier

little animal than the Weasel, with his soft fur,

slender legs, and bright, attentive eyes.

"How different he is from the viper!" he exclaimed, feeling as if he would like to stroke and pat the little

creature.

"His good looks are the best part of him," said W; "you would have more new-laid eggs for breakfast if there were fewer weasels about this farm."

Then Harry remembered the accounts he had heard of the hen-houses being robbed by weasels, and as soon as he could talk to this small specimen of the tribe, he asked him if he did not think that it was naughty to steal.

"Not at all," said the Weasel. "I work hard for my living, and because you greedy two-leggers want everything good for yourselves, you say that I steal from you. I had not been in this world more than about two months when my father first took me out with him to teach me the business by which weasels earn their living." "Tell me all about it," said Harry.

"There were four of us, Foxy, Fleetfoot, Tiny, and myself, besides my father and mother, and we lived in a very snug nest made of twigs, and leaves, and straw, and fitted into a hollow place in an old brick wall, behind some bushes. We were in easy circumstances, for my father went out every night, and never failed to bring us a good store of provisions, and my mother was a thrifty and hard-working weasel, and she kept both her family and the nest in good order, and very clean. We dozed a good deal in the day, for it is a mistake to suppose that weasels do not go to sleep, they are very easily awakened, that is all; and at night, when father had gone to business, we used to have fine fun in a meadow close by, running races by moonlight, pretending to fight, biting, scratching, and rolling over and over upon the ground like so many soft balls of fur suddenly gone mad. Mother had brought up seven or eight families before, but she used to say that she never knew a brood of weasels grow up so quickly, except Tiny, who was rather small and delicate.

"As we grew older, we wished to go to business with father, and be put in the way of getting a living for ourselves, and you would have laughed if you had seen how afraid mother was of letting us go. She argued against it with all her might, saying that we were too young, and that father's line of life was a dangerous one; though if you had heard her talking, and it had not happened to be a day of wonders, like this, you would only have noticed that she made little soft noises to us, as mother weasels do to their young ones.