"He was a man," said Mr. Carroll, looking fixedly at his guest, "he was a man that overcame many snakes of many different kinds, and how he fared at last I'll tell you."
He rose, snuffed the two candles, snipping off their wicks adroitly with a pair of old brass snuffers, and sat down, again fixing his gaze upon Homer's face. The tinderwood fire in the stove had died away to a mere glow of crisping embers; the kettle sang in dying cadence; its steam and the steam from the glasses floated athwart Homer's vision of Mr. Carroll's body, seeming to give greater keenness to the alert face, and the eyes which, always bright, seemed to glint to-night with absolute brilliancy.
"It was some time ago," said Mr. Carroll, "that this man I speak of used to kill the snakes. He had a peculiar dislike to all snakes, for a friend of his had had the life squeezed out of him in the folds of a serpent, and another friend had been bitten by one, so that he too died, having first gone mad; and another had the very breath of life sucked from him by a sly snake, so that he died--died himself, body and soul, and never knew it: only his friends saw the corpse of his old self, and knew their friend to be gone from their midst and only his semblance left, and they rejoiced much when at last this semblance died also, and they could bury it decently, like other corpses.
"There was no wonder my friend hated snakes.
"He waged war upon them; and it was his method when he found one, to take it by the tail and, with a sudden jerk, snap its head off. He killed a great many in this way; and it was always his habit to search for the head. He longed to look into the eyes, and learn wherein the power lay by which they deceived and deluded men until they stung them; but he never could find the head. Between disappointment at this, and despair because the more snakes he destroyed the more there seemed to be, my friend grew very sad. He had a horrible pain at his heart too, that no drug could ease. Time went on and the pain grew no better--it even shot through his head sometimes; but my friend persevered, and no snake escaped him.
"Well, one day he was walking in his garden, under his own trees, within his own walls, where it would be thought no snake could come, when a snake, more brilliant in color than any he had ever seen, crossed his path. For the first time, he understood a little of the feeling that makes a man spare a snake because it is beautiful; but he put the thought from him, and, catching it by the tail, jerked off its head and flung aside the body. Then he began to search for the head, feeling if he could but look into the jewel eyes of that snake that all the mystery of men's delusions would be revealed to him; and, knowing the secret of their delusions, surely he could dispel them.