Striking a match, Tom entered the room quickly, drew back the sheet of the bed, dumped in the crabs, and then pulled the sheet tip to its original place.

“He’s coming!” whispered Sam, who stood guard at the door.  “Hide, Tom,” and then he ran back to the big room adjoining.

Finding he could not escape, Tom threw the box under the bed and rushed to a closet in the corner.  Here he crouched down behind a large trunk left in the place on storage.  He had scarcely secreted himself when Josiah Crabtree came in.  He had shoved his key in the lock, but had failed to notice that the lock-bolt was already turned back.

“Oh, what a cold night,” muttered the ex-school teacher as he lit the gas.  “A warm bed will feel fine.”

“I reckon it will be warm enough,” thought Tom.

As the room was scantily heated, Crabtree lost no time in disrobing.  Having donned a long night robe, he turned off the gas, flung the sheets back, and leaped into bed.

Exactly ten seconds of silence followed.  Then came a yell calculated to raise the dead.

“Whow!  What’s this?  Oh!  What’s got me by the legs?  Oh, oh! oh!  I’m being eaten up alive!  Let go there!  Oh, dear!”

And with additional yells, Josiah Crabtree leaped straight out of bed, one crab hanging to his left knee, several on his feet, and one, which he had caught hold of clinging to the back of his hand.  At once he began to do an Indian war-dance around the apartment, knocking the furniture right and left.

“Let go there!  What on earth can they be?  Oh, my toe is half off —­ I know it is!  Let go!” And then he struggled toward the gas jet, but before he could light it Tom had slipped out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.  The banging of furniture continued, and then came a crash, as the washstand went over, carrying with it a bowl, a soap tray, and a large, pitcher filled with water.  The icy water gushed over Crabtree’s feet, making him shiver with the cold, but the crabs were undaunted and only clung the closer.

The noise soon aroused the entire hotel, and the clerk, several bell-boys, and finally the proprietor, rushed to the scene.  The door was flung wide open.

“Have you been drinking, sir?  How dare you disturb the hotel in this fashion?” demanded the proprietor.

“The crabs!  Take them off!” yelled Crabtree, continuing to dance around.

“Crabs?  What made you bring crabs up here?”

“I — I —­ oh, my toes!  Take them off!” shrieked Josiah Crabtree, and kicked out right and left.  One of the crabs was flung off, to land in the hotel proprietor’s face and to catch the man by the nose.

“My nose!  He will bite it off!” cried the hotel man.  “Kill the thing, Gillett —­ smash it with a-a-anything!”

And Gillett, the clerk, tried to do so, while the hotel man and Crabtree continued to dance around in the wildest kind of fury.  Safe in their own room, the boys laughed until they cried.  All had gone to bed, and Tom lost no time in getting under the covers.