Her peculiar tastes were an outcome of her nature, assisted by her surroundings.  Left a good deal to herself in her infancy, she made playfellows of animated nature around her, without much reference to selection or fitness, but always with a fearlessness that was the result of her own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other children’s timidity.  She had no superstition regarding the venom of toads, the poison of spiders, or the ear-penetrating capacity of earwigs.  She had experiences and revelations of her own,—­which she kept sacredly to herself, as children do,—­and one was in regard to a rattlesnake, partly induced, however, by the indiscreet warning of her elders.  She was cautioned not to take her bread and milk into the woods, and was told the affecting story of the little girl who was once regularly visited by a snake that partook of her bread and milk, and who was ultimately found rapping the head of the snake for gorging more than his share, and not “taking a ’poon as me do.”  It is needless to say that this incautious caution fired Peggy’s adventurous spirit.  She took a bowlful of milk to the haunt of a “rattler” near her home, but, without making the pretense of sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile.  After repeating this hospitality for three or four days, she was amazed one morning on returning to the house to find the snake—­an elderly one with a dozen rattles—­devotedly following her.  Alarmed, not for her own safety nor that of her family, but for the existence of her grateful friend in danger of the blacksmith’s hammer, she took a circuitous route leading it away.  Then recalling a bit of woodland lore once communicated to her by a charcoal-burner, she broke a spray of the white ash, and laid it before her in the track of the rattlesnake.  He stopped instantly, and remained motionless without crossing the slight barrier.  She repeated this experiment on later occasions, until the reptile understood her.  She kept the experience to herself, but one day it was witnessed by a tunnelman.  On that day Peggy’s reputation was made!

From this time henceforth the major part of Blue Cement Ridge became serious collectors for what was known as “Peggy’s menagerie,” and two of the tunnelmen constructed a stockaded inclosure—­not half a mile from the blacksmith’s cabin, but unknown to him—­for the reception of specimens.  For a long time its existence was kept a secret between Peggy and her loyal friends.  Her parents, aware of her eccentric tastes only through the introduction of such smaller creatures as lizards, toads, and tarantulas into their house,—­which usually escaped from their tin cans and boxes and sought refuge in the family slippers,—­had frowned upon her zoological studies.  Her mother found that her woodland rambles entailed an extraordinary wear and tear of her clothing.  A pinafore reduced to ribbons by a young fox, and a straw hat half swallowed by a mountain kid, did not seem to be a natural incident