by the score, none were of use, and the
beetles repeated their performance of the preceding night.

Gladys did not go to bed: surrounded with lighted candles, she sat on
the top of a wardrobe till daybreak. The following morning the house
was fumigated with sulphur; and people were told off to kill the
cockroaches, as they made their escape out of doors. By this means an
enormous number were killed; but at night they were just as bad as
before.

An engineer friend then suggested a freezing-machine. The temperature
of the house was reduced to ten degrees below zero; the pipes froze
(and burst next day), the milk froze, the housemaid's toes and the
cook's little finger of the left hand froze, everything froze; and
presumably the beetles froze, for there was not one to be seen.

However, it was quite impossible to resort again to this extreme
measure. John Martin had the most agonizing attacks of lumbago. Gladys
had neuralgia, and Miss Templeton--a slight touch of pleurisy.

When Gladys reached the Imperial that evening, she found that the
staff had been battling with cockroaches all day, and that they had at
last succeeded in getting rid of them with a fumigation mixture of
camphor, cocculus, sulphur, bezonia and assafoetida--suggested to them
by a Hindoo student.

For the next week not a beetle was to be seen at the theatre nor at
the Cottage; and Gladys was beginning to hope that Hamar had ceased
plaguing her (in despair of ever winning her), when the persecutions
suddenly broke out again.

She had been in bed about half an hour, and was falling into a gentle
and much needed sleep, when a tremendous rap at the wall, close to her
head, awoke her with a start, and set her heart pulsating violently.
Thinking it must be some one on the landing, she got up and lit a
candle. There was no one there. The moment she got into bed again, the
rapping was repeated, and it continued, at intervals, all night. This
went on for a week, during which time Gladys was never once able to
sleep.

A brief respite ensued; but it was abruptly terminated one morning,
when Gladys awoke feeling as if some big insect were attempting to
penetrate her body. Uttering a shriek of terror, she whipped the
clothes from her, and sprang out of bed. Miss Templeton, who slept in
the next room, came rushing in, and they both saw an enormous insect,
half beetle and half scorpion, dart under the pillow. John Martin was
fetched, but although he searched e