THE ASSAULTED CRICKET. 373 



learning,' and that ahem ! ' to instil false notions is not 

 good.' ' Fairies are fabulous,' and so, in my opinion, are spirits 

 too, I always set my face against them, always did ; and as 

 to crickets and kitchen beetles, those mean hinsects, of, I 

 should say, the genius Hachetidy and Blatty, to talk of their 

 being fairies or spirits, why " 



Here the fire-side chirper, who for the last half-hour had 

 been perfectly mute, burst forth with such shrilly loudness as 

 nearly to overpower the low husky voice of the prosaic setter- 

 down of Dolly's superstitions. Caleb's material and moral 

 machines were neither of them easily worked into accelerated 

 motion, but whether by extermination at once to silence the 

 familiar of our hearth, or by his death to convince Mrs. Dove 

 that he was a cricket and nothing more, he gave a violent 

 kick with his great splay foot against the side of the fire-place, 

 over the very spot whence the insect's voice proceeded. Down 

 fell some flakes of plaster, and away, over the heated hearth, 

 towards its opposite side, scampered the assailed cricket. But 

 his movements were not half fleet enough for the ruthless 

 Caleb, who, deaf to our interceding exclamations, and regard- 

 less even of falling embers, seized the hapless runaway by one 

 of his long leaping legs just as he had made good his retreat 

 into a snug cranny between the bricks. 



Thus hard pressed and hard pulled, the cricket abandoned 

 Iris leg, and leaving it, a trophy, in the hand of his persecutor, 



disappeared within his hard- won place of refuge. But Caleb's 

 VOL. III. 23. 



