260 A NIGHT OF TERHOR. 



rushed upon the loathsome murderess, who, intent upon her 

 prey, heeded not our approach, and, with a single blow, 

 brought her bloated body lifeless to the ground, that of her 

 victim falling with it. 



"What a night of terror did we pass, holding our vigil by t he- 

 dead; but we held it not alone, for beside poor Martha's 

 hearth, mocking or mourning its desolation, sat a monstrous 

 cricket, piercing our ear and heart with his shrilly chirp ; while 

 at intervals loud as the ticking of a church-clock rose the 

 warning click of an enormous death-watch. 



Two dreadful days passed over, at the end of which the 

 prospect out of doors was completely changed. Every tree and 

 herb were stripped of their foliage every blade of grass 

 mown down. The air was no longer laden with gigantic 

 llutterers, nor, as before, did the ground seem alive with 

 crawling monsters. Nearly all the devouring creatures whose 

 aliment consisted of herbivorous products, having almost 

 exhausted their store of provision, had either perished for want 

 of food, or fallen a prey to carnivorous enemies of their kind. 

 The ant-lion had left Ids pit-fall the spider her snare, artifice 

 being no longer needed to entrap her exhausted victims the 

 wasp rilled without combat the shrunken honey-bag of the 

 starveling bee the dragon-fly glutted his voracious maw on 

 expiring butterflies and, like a hideous Goule battening at 

 midnight on the dead, the cockroach crawled forth with the 

 shades of evening, and polluted the air with his offensive odour, 



