FEARFUL ANTICIPATION. 269 



comrade, the monster again erected itself into that appalling 

 attitude of prayer thus watched for a few moments the slow 

 unconscious movements of the glow-worm on the bank ; then 

 sprang upwards and seized in its terrible saw-like arms the 

 yielding body of the luminous beetle. Its phosphorescent 

 light flickered disappeared again shone with dimmed and 

 scattered radiance, then was utterly extinguished, as the 

 enormous living lamp was tossed and turned, and finally 

 crushed in the grasp of its destroyer. 



Then it seemed to us as if the last light of the devastated earth 

 had expired with the life of its harmless bearer, and that we, 

 in a world of darkness and destruction, were left alone with 

 one devouring hideous monster. We could hear nothing but 

 the " champ, champ " of its ravening jaws, and the clashing 

 movements of its rigid limbs, as it now and then turned its 

 prey for the more convenient discussion of its loathsome meal. 



The dews of that summer night were lighter than the drops 

 which fell from our reeking forehead, and our trembling arms 

 could scarcely retain their grasp of the leafless branches which 

 secured our seat upon the elm. 



The monster's meal was followed by a dead silence but it 

 was not of long duration ; and then we found him to be again 

 in motion by the renewed sound of his long horny limbs 

 which approached nearer and nearer, as he seemed to draw 

 them after him, in cat-like crawling progress, towards the 

 bottom of our tree. The darkness still hid him from our 



