he disaster had fallen upon the defeated and despairing
woman, and to protect her from the taunts of the head of the house, Lizzie
induced her to go to bed, where she sobbed throughout the night.

The next day was hot and windy. The grasshoppers, unable to fly in a
strong wind, clung to the weeds, to the dry grass, the stripped branches
of the half-grown trees, to the cattle and hogs upon which they happened
to alight, and even to people themselves, unless brushed off.

Lizzie took the cattle out to the usual grazing ground, but there was no
Luther to help, and the grasshoppers made the lives of the restless
animals so unendurable that in real alarm, lest they run away again, she
took them home, preferring her father's wrath to the experience of getting
them back if they should get beyond her control. Fortune favoured her.
Unable to endure the demonstrations of grief at home, her father had taken
himself to a distant neighbour's to discuss the "plague of locusts."

The wind blew a gale throughout the day, sweeping remorselessly over the
unobstructed hillsides. Unable to fly, the helpless insects hugged the
earth while the gale tore over the Kansas prairies with a fearful
velocity. With feminine instinct, every female grasshopper burrowed into
the dry earth, making a hole which would receive almost her entire body
back of her wings and legs. The spring sod, half rotted and loosened from
the grass roots, furnished the best lodgment. In each hole, as deep down
as her body could reach, her pouch of eggs was deposited.

No attempt was made to cover the hole, and by night the sod presented a
honeycombed appearance never before seen by the oldest settlers. Having
performed nature's functions, and provided for the propagation of their
kind, the lately fecund grasshoppers were hungry when the act was over.
Not a spear of anything green was left. The travel-worn horde had devoured
everything in sight the day before. Evening closed in upon a restless and
excited swarm of starving insects, but they were unable to fly at night or
while the wind was blowing.

It was necessary to find food; hunger's pangs may not be suffered long by
creatures whose active life is numbered in weeks. The high wind had cooled
the air and made the locusts stupid and sleepy, but when the next morning
the wind had fallen, and the sun had warmed their bodies, as fast as they
were able all were on the wing, headed for the north. The air was calm,
and by te