260 A NIGHT OF TERROR. 



kitchen poker, we 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 

 the 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 flut- 

 terers, 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 his pit-fall the spider her snare, artifice 

 being no longer needed to entrap her exhausted victims the 

 wasp rifled without combat the shrunken honey-bag of the 

 starveling bee the dragon-fly glutted his voracious maw on 

 expiring butterflies and, like a hideous Ghoul battening at 

 midnight on the dead, the cockroach crawled forth with the 

 shades of evening, and polluted the air with his offensive 



