“You hand him over to the police, or you thrash him right well with a horsewhip, pay five pounds penalty for the assault, and there's an end on't.” “And is 'Grog' as they call him, the man to put up with that mode of treatment?” “What can he do? Notoriety must ruin him. The moment it gets abroad that a wolf has been seen near a village, all turn out for the pursuit.” Had he who uttered this sentiment only cast his eyes towards the stranger at the table in the corner, he would have seen, by the expression of the features, that his simile was not a bad one. Davis shook with passion, and his self-control, to sit still and listen, was almost like a fit. “All the more ungenerous, then, would be the conduct,” said the younger, “to resent a personal wrong by calling in others to your aid.” “Don't you see, George,” broke in the other, “that men have their beasts of prey like other animals, and agree to hunt them down, out of common security, for the mischief he causes, and the misery he spreads through the world? One of these fellows in his lair is worse than any tiger that ever crouched in a jungle. And as to dealing with him, as Ellis says, do you ever talk of giving a tiger fair play,--do you make a duel of it, with equal weapons; or do you just shoot him down when you can and how you can?” Davis arose and drew himself up, and there was a moment of irresolution in his mind, of which, could the two travellers-have read the secret, they would almost as soon have smoked their cigars in the den of a wild beast. And yet there they sat, puffing indolently away the blue cloud, scarcely deigning a passing glance at Grog, as he proceeded to leave the room. Anatomists assure us that if we but knew the delicate tissues by which the machinery of our life is carried on, how slight the fibres, how complex the functions on which vitality depends, we should not have courage to move, or even speak, lest we should destroy an organization so delicate and sensitive. In like manner, did we but know in life the perils over which we daily pass, the charged mines over which we walk, the volcanoes that are actually throbbing beneath our feet, what terrors would it give to mere existence! It was on the turn of a straw how Davis decided,--a word the more, a look from one of them, a laugh, might have cost a life. With a long-drawn breath, the sigh of a pent-up emotion, Grog found himself in the open air; there was a vague feeling in his mind of having escaped a peril, but what or where or how he could n't remember.