It centers on the legend of Saint Patrick defeating the King of the Snakes in Ireland, as well as on the troubled romance between the main character and a local peasant girl.

A year before the release of The Snake's Pass, Stoker published chapter three, "The Gombeen Man", as a short story in The People.

Stoker's first book, The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, was written in Dublin and published in 1879.

Andy suggests the two men stop traveling for the night and stay in the small town of Carnacliff.

Andy takes them to a local bar where a man named Jerry Scanlan tells the legendary story of Shleenanaher.

The impending fog that occasionally sweeps over the town, along with a nearby swamp or bog, is said to be the form the King has decided to come back in to watch his crown.

After Jerry finishes his story, an old, drunk man named Mr. Moynahan speaks up about the hidden treasure that is somewhere in the hills.

The townspeople in the bar begin to tell Arthur of the evil villain of the town, Black Murdock.

Joyce tells Murdock he has the money, but was delayed because he fell into a hole on his way to the bar and injured his arm.

It is very dark when they reach Joyce's house and Arthur can hear the sweet sound of his daughter's voice helping him out of the carriage.

Arthur is never able to see the face that belongs to the sweet voice but Andy tells him her name is Norah.

He describes her being "a beautiful peasant girl had great gifts-a heart of gold, a sweet, pure nature, and a rare intelligence."

At dinner one evening, Dick tells Arthur of his love for Norah Joyce but fears her father will despise him because he is working on Murdock's land.

The next day, Arthur decides to go to Murdock to try and buy his land from him so that he can, in turn, give it to Dick to help him with Norah and Joyce.

Joyce agrees and Arthur names Dick the sole protector of the land until he returns from London where he will be setting up Norah's schooling.

The three of them safely bring Moynahan back to Joyce's and help him to bed but when he awakes the next morning he remembers nothing of the night before.

They are joined by Dick and Joyce while they watch Murdock stand atop his home and sink into the bog.

Arthur and Norah are reunited with her father and Dick and safely make it back to Joyce's home where they each retell their story of what happened to them during the storm.

Before the stream cut its way through the limestone, and made the cavern, the waters were forced upwards to the lake at the top of the hill and so kept it supplied.

On the land, Dick used the limestone to create possibilities in the way of building waterworks systems and a new house was built.

After the two years of Norah's schooling end, she and Arthur are married and leave for their honeymoon in Italy where there is "not a cloud in the sky."

While The Snake's Pass is a fictional book, Stoker uses nonfictional themes and ideas, such as the explanation of the bog, to create a more realistic novel.

His very wealthy aunt takes Arthur into custody and reveals to him that his parents left him a great sum of money.

Arthur's character is very quiet and Stoker describes him as feeling like an outsider even in his own family.

Joyce has recently lost his wife, and his son has moved away to go to school, so he relies on the help of his daughter, Norah.

When Arthur happens upon Norah on the hills, he describes her as being a plainly dressed peasant girl, but all still very beautiful.

After Norah and Arthur has expressed their love to each other, she raises the idea that they are not of the same social class and she will be unable to maintain conversation with Arthur's companions once have married Even the evil Murdock harasses Norah for being a lower social class.

At this time of the century, the Irish could no longer make a living from the land, and needed to find different sources of income.

In Nicholas Daly's book Modernism, Romance and the Fin de Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture he discusses the theme of imperial space for the 19th-century adventure novel.

Daly believes that Stoker "fails to capture the nature of the dimensions in which the novel originated and functioned".