whether thou can'st be killed, or whether
thou art not the Wandering Jew, or Old
Nick himself.' With these words, listening
no more to the tears and entreaties of the
man than if he had been a hyena, he devoted
him to the infernal powers in familiar
language, and, stabbing him with his cutlass,
said 'Take that!'

"The man struggled violently on the ground
for a few seconds, and then lay still on the
sand.

"'That's a settler, I think,' said the
outlaw, whose hand had executed worse
horrors than even that, since he had been
hunted and bidden for by government; burning
secluded families in their own huts at
midnight, and making solitary travellers run
a race for their lives as a mark for the rifles
of his men. 'If the fellow comes to life
again,' he said, coolly, 'I must get his secret,
for it is very likely to be useful to me.' Wiping
his cutlass, first on some long grass that he
pulled up, and then on his coat-sleeve, he
coolly marched away with his crew."

"And that certainly must have been a
settler," said the professor.

"By no means," added the doctor. "After
a time the convict returned to consciousness.
Fearfully weak, he was tormented with a burning
thirst; but was still alive. With much
effort, and various faintings, he managed
to crawl in the direction of a stream that ran
riotously and sonorously down the rocky
valley, and there quenched his burning thirst
in the deliciously cold water. Again
exhausted, he sank back on the bank; and
would no doubt have perished, had not a
stockman come in quest of stray cattle. He
removed him to his hut, having first bound up
the wound in his chest; and, after a long period
of illness and debility, the man was once
more well, and determined to return, and
deliver himself up to the authorities at
Hobart Town, where, you may be sure, his
story and the confirmatory scars upon him,
excited an immense sensation."

"But how could the man survive a thrust
through the body?" said the professor, in
amazement.

"It was a mere case of loss of blood,"
replied the doctor; "the weapon had luckily
passed between the ribs without touching
any vital part, and the man had swooned
from agony and hæmorrhage."

"Horrid times!" ejaculated Fitz. "In
those days of unnatural history, natural
history, of course, was not. Only think of
stumbling on Musquito or Howe, who may
be called the Tasmanian Alexander the
Great; for, literally—

      'Thrice he fought his battles o'er,
      And thrice he slew the slain.'

"Fie, Fritz!" said the doctor, laughing.
"Yet, even in my early days, here I
botanised and entomologised. And that was
the sole cause of my encountering any danger,
or being compelled to shed blood."

"To shed blood!" simultaneously
exclaimed his hearers.

A serious cloud passed over the worthy
doctor's features, and in a different tone he
added—"Yes! In all my rough and solitary
rides in this insular depôt of excited ruffians;
in all my night wanderings, when called, as
must be the case, to often distant abodes,
in the very worst parts of the island; I have
always found my profession and my errand
an infallible safeguard. Whenever I have
been stopped by outlawed fellows, whose very
name and fame all over the island were a
horror, to their demand of 'Who goes there?'
my reply, 'The Doctor,' brought the instant
rejoinder—' All right! Go, in God's name,
doctor!' Nay, these very fellows have, on
many an occasion, been my guides, conducting
me by ways known only to themselves,
confident that I would never betray them. To
them I owe a knowledge of passes and short
cuts through these hills that no man besides
is acquainted with. I have often received
refreshments from these fierce outcasts of
humanity, when I was ready to faint with
exhaustion; more than once I have even
slept all night in their rude huts in the
mountains, feeling the profoundest security
in guards who had the repute of being destitute
of all feelings but the most diabolical.
I have attended them in their sickness or
their wounds, and I have seen and heard
revelations by the death-beds of robbers and
murderers that would draw tears from a
stone. Oh! if the world did but know what
glorious faculties and feelings might be
cultivated in youth, in the poorest and most
abject of our population—toads and deformed
reptiles as they afterwards appear to us, yet
in whose heads and hearts God has originally
deposited the precious jewel of a great and
capable nature—many a man, who has come
hither leprous with crime, and venomous as a
trodden serpent, would have remained at
home to adorn society, and to accelerate its
progress towards higher knowledge and a
nobler standard of opinion!"

"But what was the exception?"

"This: I had but little to do, and I
made long rambles, devoting those attentions
to insects which were not required by
patients. In one of these, I entered a new
township in a remote situation, and stopped
for the night at an inn still but partly
furnished. I observed that my bedroom had no
lock, but that was too common to give me
any concern. But, having deposited in this
room when I had gone up, on entering, to wash
my hands, a brace of pistols, and a small
morocco case in which I carried my insects, I
observed that these articles had been
removed and replaced in a very different
manner. I examined the pistols, and found,
to my surprise, that they had been both
unloaded, and that water had been poured
into them. This gave me a strange sensation,
and it occurred to me that my insect