There came to the ears of the Muscogulgee youth, from the summit of the Northern mountains, a sound of distant thunder, which in a moment was succeeded by the sweetest song that ever was breathed upon mortal ears. He could not distinguish all the words, but he heard enough to teach him that it was a song of supplication to the Great Spirit for a "brave and good Muscogulgee hunter, about to be caught in the fangs of the Kind Old Kings." The moment the thunder and the song were heard, the rattles were still, the bright eyes sent forth no more light, and the fiery tongues retreated within the closed and recumbent jaws. Of all that body of hideous reptiles not one seemed to be imbued with breath. Nearer and nearer came the song, and as it came the hunter fancied that it was the music of a being moving level with the earth, if not beneath its surface. He was right. Soon, in the grass at his feet, appeared a little snake scarcely thicker than his little finger, and not longer than the space between his hand and his shoulder. The colours of this little reptile were as various and beautiful as those of the eyes of the Kind Old Kings, but these were fixed and permanent, those as I have said changeable and changing as a woman's mind. The head was green, the sides were yellow, the belly white, down its back ran two red stripes, and there were rings of bright crimson around its tail. Elevating its head as it drew near, it remained stationary and silent for a moment, and then addressed the Muscogulgee in these words:--
"I am the spirit raised by the potent _medicine_ of the Cherokee priest; and, invoked by thy call, I have hastened hither at thy cry of distress, to tell thee thou art not _lost_. Though thou didst a foolish thing to come to this valley of death, and he, at whose bidding the thing was undertaken, a wicked one in sending thee, yet thou shalt not die this time. I am the Maiden in Green, the ruling Spirit of both mountain and valley, having power over even the Bright Old Inhabitants, and they shall not harm thee. Thou art, if I remember right, commanded, as the price of the beautiful daughter of the Cherokee _powwow_, to carry to him a tooth from the jaw of a living King and a rattle from his tail, and an eye from his skull; and to report of sundry things not necessary to be named. Thou shalt have my aid to accomplish these things."