Talk about vendettas! No Sicilian feud was ever bitterer or more relentlessly pursued, as the boy increased in size and confidence.

Scores of garter-snakes had been his victims; once even a milk-snake had yielded up the ghost, and once--a great day that--he had seen a black-snake in the open and had assailed it valorously with stones hurled from a distance.

When it came toward him he retreated, but did not abandon the bombardment, and finally drove it into a cover of deep bushes.

Come to close quarters with a black-snake he had never done, for a double reason: firstly, because stones did almost as well as a club, and, secondly, because his father, fearing for him, had threatened him with punishment if he essayed such combat, and the firm old rule of "spare the rod and spoil the child" was adhered to literally by the father and indorsed by the mother with hesitation.
And, growing close to the house, were slender sprouts of birch and willow, each of which leaned forward as if to say, "I am just the thing to lick a boy with," and such a sprout as one of these, especially the willow, does, under proper conditions, so embrace one's shoulders and curl about one's legs and make itself familiar.

But the feud was on, and as a permanency, though, on this particular afternoon, the young man, as he stood there in the doorway, had no thought of snakes.
Something else this summer was attracting much of his attention.