verywhere, not a trace of the
insect could be found.

That night, directly Gladys got in bed and blew out the light, she
heard a ticking sound on the sheets, and a huge insect with long hairy
legs ran up her sleeve. Her shrieks brought the whole household to the
room, but the insect was nowhere to be seen.

She was thus plagued for nearly a fortnight. One insect only--never a
number, but only one, of prodigious size and terrifying form--appeared
to her in the least suspected places, _i.e._, on the dressing-table or
chimney-piece, in her shoes, or pockets; crawled over her in the dark;
and could never be caught.

These perpetual frights, and consequent sleeplessness, wore Gladys
out. She grew so ill that she had to give up acting, and go into a
home to try the rest cure.

Hamar then communicated with her, through a third person, and offered
to leave off tormenting her, if she would agree to be engaged to him.

"I never will!" she said.

"Then I will never leave off persecuting you," was his retort.

But he was wary. He had no wish to kill her or to damage her looks--so
he let her get well and remain thus for a brief space. When she was
once again in full vigour, acting at the Imperial, he recommenced his
unwelcome attentions.

At first he confined his new plague to the servants at the Cottage.
The cook was one day turning out a drawer in the kitchen dresser, when
she was horrified out of her senses to find squatting there, a large,
black toad, which stared most malevolently at her, and then sprang in
her face. She shrieked to the housemaid to help her kill it, but
before a weapon could be got, the creature had bounced through an open
window, and disappeared.

After this incident the servants knew no peace. Their bedclothes were
thrown off them at night, their dresses torn and bespattered with ink,
their brushes and combs thrown out of the window, and the water they
poured out to wash in was sometimes quite black, sometimes full of a
bright green sediment, and sometimes boiling, when it invariably
cracked both the jug and basin.

Unable to stand these annoyances the servants left in a body. Their
successors fared the same, and worse. Besides having to endure the
above-named horrors, pebbles were thrown through the windows, their
chairs were pulled away as they were about to sit down (the cook, who
was one of those upon whom this trick was played, thereby seriously
injuring her spine), and all sorts of obstacl