An unpleasant circumstance was communicated to me very feelingly during the storm on this occasion. The straw roof of Miriam’s house was a great resort of lizards, and their long serpentine burrows in the thatch were so many irrigating canals, all of which, for my sins, I suppose, according to Abyssinian ideas of judgment, terminated over my bed-place, and I found that unless something was done to remedy this evil, either by altering my course of life, or by applying more straw to the roof, I must drag out the remainder of my life in a shower-bath. As to getting well of an ague under such circumstances, even my sanguine disposition gave up the idea, and Walderheros, whose fortune at court depended upon my health being established, was shockingly excited at this sad prospect of recovery, and was up and looking into the matter immediately after the brief thunder-storm had ceased. The lowness of the walls facilitated his examination, and stepping from the ground he essayed to mount the roof, but the very next moment I saw his black naked leg thrust quite through the frail stick construction; filling the whole place with decayed thatch and dirt, besides threatening my ribs beneath the hanging foot, with no gentle application of his heel, as he convulsively, but vainly endeavoured to extricate himself. Fortunately, a straw-band, which in his agony he had seized and held on by as a centre of support, broke with the violence of the struggles he made to escape, and he was again tumbled backwards out of the hole, head and neck over on to the ground, quite as suddenly and as expeditiously as he had before fallen into the dilemma. Confounding his zeal, and that of all such injudicious friends, I was in no humour to laugh when he came in, covered with mud and broken bits of straw, as if he had been tarred and feathered; whilst the shouts and jeers of all the boys of the neighbourhood, and Miriam’s high displeasure, was all the return he got for the readiness he shewed to risk in my service, his very heavy carcase upon a rotten roof. An ahmulah was the estimate of the damage done: Walderheros’ procuring for that sum straw sufficient to thatch the whole roof afresh, and before night, such was his dexterity, and that of some of the neighbours who good-naturedly came forward to assist him, the work was finished, and the house several ahmulahs better for comfort, considering the season, than previously to the accident.