Indeed, they would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress.  There was as usual a furious “zephyr” blowing the first night of the brigade’s return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew off, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch.  There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow aisle between the bedrows.  In the midst of the turmoil, Bob H——­ sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head.  Instantly he shouted: 

“Turn out, boys—­the tarantulas is loose!”

No warning ever sounded so dreadful.  Nobody tried, any longer, to leave the room, lest he might step on a tarantula.  Every man groped for a trunk or a bed, and jumped on it.  Then followed the strangest silence—­a silence of grisly suspense it was, too—­waiting, expectancy, fear.  It was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a thing could be seen.  Then came occasional little interruptions of the silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or changes of position.  The occasional voices were not given to much speaking—­you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of “Ow!” followed by a solid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor.  Another silence.  Presently you would hear a gasping voice say: 

“Su—­su—­something’s crawling up the back of my neck!”

Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a sorrowful “O Lord!” and then you knew that somebody was getting away from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, either.  Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear: 

“I’ve got him!  I’ve got him!” [Pause, and probable change of circumstances.] “No, he’s got me!  Oh, ain’t they never going to fetch a lantern!”

The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O’Flannigan, whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a larger contract.

The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us.  Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the semblance of a smile anywhere visible.  I know I am not capable of suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping,