"You probably wouldn't," Lessing replied. He took a fresh cigarette from the box and lit it. "The tale afforded some stray paragraphs in the papers, at different times, much as the periodical accounts of 'authentic' ghosts do, but I don't believe anyone gave the slightest credence to it. The Jersey Devil, to sum up all that I have been able to glean on the subject, was a legendary monster, reputed to have been seen, on the evidence of several persons, at different periods during the past fifty or sixty years. The legend goes back, I believe, to just before the Civil War. According to the story, its appearance gives warning to some national trouble or calamity. It was said to have been seen before Lincoln's assassination, before the Spanish-American War, and before the assassination of President McKinley. It is described as a creature having the body of a bat and the head of a horse--sometimes as a quasi-human head on a winged animal body--and it haunts certain counties of New Jersey, chiefly Monmouth and Ocean counties, and has also been seen as far north as Pennsylvania. The legend goes that it is a changeling, that is to say, a devil which took possession of a child's body at birth and flew off in the shape of a monster. Why it should have developed the sort of national solicitude they claim for it is unexplained. Of course the evidence is almost entirely that of superstitious country people who saw it, or thought they saw it, but the fact remains that the evidence in every case tallies, even after intervals of ten or twenty years. "We may take it that very legend has somewhere some natural origin, however much it may be subsequently exaggerated or distorted. Why, if this particular legend is purely imaginary, should it be confined to certain districts and not to others? We are not dealing with an apparition reputed to haunt one particular place. It has a pretty wide range of country, on the contrary, and its appearance has been vouched for, almost simultaneously, in places a great many miles apart. Why should it be seen in one certain county and not in the adjoining ones, where the inhabitants are probably equally superstitious? Also it is not seen actually at the time of trouble, when people's minds might be most naturally influenced by superstition, but days and sometimes weeks before the event. That fact in itself I attach no importance to. There is a coincidence, and people naturally connect the two ideas. But I mention it to prove that in no instance was the thing seen because it was expected to be seen; its appearance in each case was entirely without warning or predisposition." I moved in my chair. "We've got enough to deal with as the thing stands. If you're going to back it up with any old wives' tales of a bat-winged horse----"