invaded by one of the most notorious ruffians who had ever been an impersonation of, or lived by, the law of force. This interesting specimen of the _genus homo_ had, on the last of these visits, demanded that my friends should hand over to him one pair of blankets; but as the prospectus he produced, with respect to payment, was not at all satisfactory, my friends declined to enter into the speculation, the more particularly as the blankets were mine. Our freebooting acquaintance then, to explain his views more clearly, knocked both my friends down; threatened to kill them both with his tomahawk; then rushed into the bed-room, dragged out all the bed-clothes, and burnt them on the kitchen fire. This last affair was rather displeasing to me. I held to the theory that every Englishman's house was his castle, and was moreover rather savage at my guests having been so roughly handled. I in fact began to feel that though I had up to this time managed to hold my own pretty well, I was at last in danger of falling under the imposition of "black mail," and losing my _status_ as an independent potentate--a _rangatira_ of the first water. I then and there declared loudly that it was well for the offender that I had not been at home, and that if ever he tried his tricks with _me_ he would find out his mistake. These declarations of war, I perceived, were heard by my men in a sort of incredulous silence, (silence in New Zealand gives _dis_-sent,) and though the fellows were stout chaps, who would not mind a row with any ordinary mortal, I verily believe they would have all ran at the first appearance of this redoubted ruffian. Indeed his antecedents had been such as might have almost been their excuse. He had killed several men in fair fight, and had also--as was well known--committed two most diabolical murders, one of which was on his own wife, a fine young woman, whose brains he blew out at half a second's notice for no further provocation than this:--He was sitting in the verandah of his house, and told her to bring him a light for his pipe. She, being occupied in domestic affairs, said, "Can't you fetch it yourself? I am going for water." She had the calibash in her hand and their infant child on her back. He snatched up his gun and instantly shot her dead on the spot; and I had heard him afterwards describing quite coolly the comical way in which her brains had been knocked out by the shot with which the gun was loaded. He also had, for some trifling provocation, lopped off the arm of his own brother or cousin, I forget which, and was, altogether, from his tremendous bodily strength and utter insensibility to danger, about as "ugly a customer" as one would care to meet.