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The musquaw finds great difficulty at first in satisfying the cravings of his appetite. He searches for the cranberries in the open bogs, and is driven even to eat the rank marshy grass. As the snow disappears, he seeks for wood-lice and other creatures in rotten trunks. Hungry as he is, he labours very patiently for his food.
Behind them came the beasts; the oxen that tried to batter down the walls with their horns, the flocks of asses, goats, and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth.
Look. Snells!" He brought out a handful of snails from a miniature pocket, and put them on the ground. "Watch 'em put their horns out! Watch 'em walk. Look! They're walkin'. They're walkin'." His voice was a scream of ecstasy. He took them up and returned them to their pocket. From another he drew out a wriggling mass. "Wood-lice!" he explained, casually. "Got worms in 'nother pocket."
A few score years ago, sick people were made to swallow burnt toads and powdered earth-worms and the expressed juice of wood-lice. The physician of Charles I. and II. prescribed abominations not to be named. Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century.
There seemed no scarcity of worms, wood-lice, centipedes, or beetles, but no earwigs could I see; and I was just about to give up the search when, lifting a piece of stone, I saw a small cavity, about as large as would contain a pea, and in it lay about twenty-six round, white eggs, hard-shelled and shining, of the size of a small pin's head.
It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders, caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many had sickly limbs dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms sprawling around them.
But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down by bucketsful, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and higher, and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks; and straws, and worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.
A little coaxing then induced it to crawl slowly into its master's hand, which it more than filled, sitting there perfectly contented till it was placed in another pickle-jar to feed, this one being furnished with wood-lice, pill millipedes, and other luxuries dear to a toad.
"In the morning she walked with me as far as The Follies, and I have been for the last few hours very busy. There'll be a good deal of excitement amongst the servants to-day. I did hope that the wood-lice would settle Frosty; but now you have interfered. Why can't you let her go? She's no manner of use to me.
I put the wood-lice back in my pocket, and stretching my arms yawningly above my head, I said to Jem, "How dull it is! I wish I were a bandit." Jem generally outdid me if possible, from sheer willingness and loyalty of spirit. "I should like to be a burglar," said he. And then we both left the room very quietly and politely. But when we got outside I said, "I hate that woman."
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