case had been supposed to contain money,
and that there was a design to rob me. It
was too late to quit the house without notice,
and without running greater risk outside than
in the room itself. I carefully wiped dry
and reloaded the pistols, drew with as little
noise as possible a heavy chest of drawers
against the door, and threw myself down in
my clothes, anxiously waiting for the
anticipated attack. It came. About midnight, I
heard something at the door—force applied
to push back the obstruction. My candle
had burnt out; but I exclaimed, 'Who's
there?'

"'Oh! are you awake?' said a man's voice,
which I supposed that of the landlord; 'I
want to come in for some bed linen in the
drawers—a guest has just arrived, and we
can't do without it.'

"I told him nobody should come in on any
account till morning. The man swore that
he must and would, and proceeded to push
violently at the door. On this I started up
and cried, 'Desist! or take the consequences;
whoever comes in here is a dead man!' But
the man—and he was a huge, brawny fellow
—swore dreadful oaths that he would come
in; and, as he furiously thrust open the door,
I fired."

"Mein Gott!" exclaimed the two German
gentlemen, recurring in their excitement to
their native tongue, though they usually
spoke English like Englishmen.

"Yes," continued the doctor; "he fell,
I heard a groan. I could see nothing, but
I heard a great running on the stairs, and
low, suppressed exclamations of horror, and
whisperings. Then all was still, and I
remained in a condition which you may
imagine, till morning. No one came near
the chamber. At daybreak I pushed away
the drawers, looked out, expecting to see a
frightful stain of blood, but all was clean—
the floor had been carefully scoured.

"I descended. There was no one to be seen
but a girl, who looked at me with a sort of
stupid wonder. I asked what I owed, paid it
to her, and walked away. No one appeared
to oppose or to question me. It seemed all
like a horrible dream. As I ascended the
village, a man began tolling a bell which hung
in a tree by a new wooden chapel. I asked
what that meant.

"'It is the passing-bell,' said the man, 'for
the landlord down yonder, who died
suddenly in the night.'

"The words struck me like an actual blow;
I went on—no one pursued me—no one
ever afterwards spoke or seemed to know of
the affair. A short time ago I was in that
neighbourhood. The place is become a great
town; a new family is in the inn, which is
one of extensive business. I ventured to ask
if such a tradition did not exist? No one had
heard a syllable about it."

"You had a narrow escape, doctor," said
his wondering friends.

"Ay; and what would I now give if I
had not told that dishonest landlord that I
had discovered his trick, and that my pistols
were once more loaded. It was his conviction
that they were empty which made him
secure."

"No doubt of it," replied the professor,
"and enabled you to rid the country of a
monster who would have victimised others if
he even failed with you."

"That is my only comfort," said the doctor
musingly; "but we must soon to bed, and
before I can do that, I must relieve my mind
of another scene, which I can only effect by
giving it words, and thus insure my sleep. I
have just witnessed the end of one of those
extraordinary criminals which it requires the
air of Europe and that of new colonies
combined, to produce."

"What criminal can that be?" asked the
naturalists, their attention excited by the
expectation of some novelty in their own
region of inquiry.

"It is the land-shark," said the doctor.

"The land-shark!" said the eager
expectants, laughing; "that must be a lusus
naturæ, a nondescript, indeed."

"No," replied the doctor; "it is a creature
well known, accurately described and classified,
no sport of nature, but the offspring
of colonial life and of the spirit of modern
Europe. You have seen the Tasmanian
devil—a furious beast that will devour
its own species when wounded. The land-
shark is even a worse devourer of his kind.
You have seen how horses here will paw up
and devour earth on which salt has been
spilled?"

"Yes," said Fritz, merrily; "I know that
to my cost; for many a time have I had to
rise and rush forth in the night and,
undressed, chase away into the bush wretched
horses who were champing, and pawing, and
snorting close to our tent, where our host
had poured out the salt water from pickled
beef."

"Well," continued the doctor, "the land-
shark swallows up earth by acres and leagues;
the wehr-wolf of Scandinavian legends never
had such a capacity for the marvellous in
deglutition. Australia has produced no lion,
tiger, grizzly bear, or such ferocious monsters,
but it has produced the land-shark, and that
is a monstrum horrendum worse than all of
them put together. It is worse, because it
wears the shape of a man; and, with a face
as innocent, as meek, and placid as a
manticora or a syren, takes shelter under human
laws. In a word, a land-shark is a thing
which combines all the attributes of the
incubus, the cannibal, the vampyre, and the
choke-damp. Where it lives nobody else
can live. It is the upas-tree become animated
and, walking over the southern world like a
new Frankenstein, producing stagnation,
distortion, death-in-life, and desolation wherever
it arrives. It is the regrater and forestaller