forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae to
which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop
of water, carniverous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter
than himself, is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his
nature, than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us
malignant and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter."

"And could that wall never be removed?" asked young Glyndon, abruptly.
"Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and immemorial as
they are, merely fables?"

"Perhaps yes; perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently. "But
who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would
be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and
the lion, to repine at and rebel against the law of nature which
confines the shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle
speculations."

Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet,
and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.

"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.

The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.

"I never saw him before," said Merton, at last.

"Nor I."