the still quivering flesh from the quarters, while its companions flee in terror, scattered in all directions. The poor village guala swarms up the nearest tree, and shouts for aid in vain, trying to scare the enemy from his frightened herds.

He is a wasteful beast, a tiger, often killing two or three out of a drove of cattle within a space of fifty yards. But if he has once got the taste of human flesh he gets too lazy to strike the big cattle, and prefers a smaller victim more easily slain and tasty, and light enough to carry off as a cat does a mouse. Such a one was the son of the old Juli tigress. He preferred a man, or, better still, a woman, but he would take a calf if one came handy to him, and if he was hungry, which he generally was after a three days' roaming. There lived near Juli, high up on the first hills, a villager of Motee's kin, called Jussoo. He was a son of the pudhan of that village, and a noted shikari, a man skilled in all woodcraft, who knew how to trap or snare all animals of the jungle; could take the kalij pheasant and the soft whistling peura partridge* in his snares, with lines of horsehair nooses set cunningly near the drinking pools. He could trap the kakur or barking deer, and even a bear might be taken in his snare, fastened to a sapling which had sprung back and tightened on its paw. He could set great beams weighted with rocks to fall on an unwary tiger; but a gun was not much in his line, and, indeed, he had no license to carry one; and he did not believe much in a matchlock, a long clumsy thing which takes a lot of coaxing to let it off and then shoots very badly. He had, however, great faith in the sahib's double-barrelled Westley-Richards rifle, which

* Arboricola rufogularis.

† Strange to say, a bear will eat his own paw off before he will cut the thong.

had knocked over many a kakur and brought the big jerow or red deer to the ground, clean shot behind the shoulder, at 200 yards, and had won rifle contest prizes at Naini Tal shooting matches against all the North-West Provinces. Jussoo was a marvellous tracker, and could follow the khoj (track) over every ground and tell how long ago the beast had passed. He knew well the 'pug' of the Juli tiger, which had a peculiar twist of one claw. By his assistance many a head of big game had been brought to bay, and much jungle lore had been picked up by conversing with him and watching his silent, stealthy ways. He never failed to bring information when his enemy the manswag came into the valleys above Juli village; and saw to the tying out of a buffalo calf in a likely place.

Work for the year having ended before the rains set in, and the sahib having taken up his residence at Naini Tal, Jussoo appeared one day at the bungalow door with a face of excitement, requesting an interview. The result was a hurried discarding of the smart society get-up which the gay season made necessary, and a rapid start in the lightest marching order and jungle costume into camp. A smart dun-coloured hill pony, that could go downhill like a goat, shambling along in a sort of rapid run—not a trot or a walk-of the breed called Bhotia, or gunt, soon brought the eager tiger-hunter down the nine miles of almost precipitous descent by the winding pag dandi (footpath) to Juli. Every thousand feet of lower elevation meant degrees of higher temperature, the rise being from about 70° to 120°.

Next morning a buffalo calf was procured from the village and tied out in a secluded valley right up in the heart of the most jungly recesses of the forest under the Juli range. Jussoo, whose intimate knowledge of the

haunts and habits of the tiger led him to this spot, declared that the tiger was here, lying in some cave under the rocks. He pointed out the perfectly fresh tracks on the sand of the stream bed. He declared he had performed a sacrifice to the devta or deity who haunted that jungle, and the omens had been good, so that he felt certain that this time the sahib would kill the man-eater; that fortune, which had not befriended us in many previous attempts, was now turned in our favour, and the fairies were propitious.

There is something weird and uncanny in the tigerfrequented jungle, where not a sound is heard, and you pass along seeing nothing, and yet knowing that he is lurking close by, perhaps looking at you, yet invisible, but his presence assured by the great impressions on the sand, once seen never to be forgotten, into which the water is fast oozing. This was a lovely glen with lofty walls of rock rising high on one side, over-arched by great trees of dark evergreen foliage, with sloping bank rising opposite from the stream, clad with bushes of the beri, or prickly thorn, in dense brakes topped by lightgreen feathery mimosa, wild lemons, and other tropical trees. The gay yellow-flowered cassia,* and various creepers hanging in luxuriant wildness, presented a picture of beauty and harmony like a huge conservatory of the rarest plants, orchids of various forms clinging to the rugged stems, the silence only broken by the murmur of the pellucid green water over the fern-clad rocks, and the shade of the huge overhanging mountain hiding the almost vertical sun. Having chosen an open space under some great trees of wild mango, Jussoo proceeded to tie up a buffalo calf which his boy had been ordered to lead to the spot. There was a suitable fork in a thick leafy * Cassia fistula.

tree for making the machan, which was done by tying some branches crosswise, and weaving a screen of boughs at a height of some ten feet from the ground. Above the glen there towered a rock of gray sandstone in view of the spot, whence the boy was instructed to look down at evening time and again at dawn, to report as to the safety of the calf. A cow-bell, made of hard wood hollowed out with a tongue inside, was fastened round the patient buffalo's neck, and he was left to his certain fate. These preparations made, there was nothing to do but to return to camp and wait patiently for news.

Patience is a virtue important if the shikari will be successful; and other necessary qualities are foresight, silence, the faculty of observing every indication of the tiger's presence, and cunning to outwit so stealthy and guileful an animal as the lord of the jungle. Nightfall came without news, and the darkness and stillness of the sweltering atmosphere was oppressive. Sleep was hard to woo, and the ears of the watchful and excited Jussoo were ever strained to catch the distant sounds and night noises of the jungle. Twice the hollow, unmistakable yawning call of the tiger came on the sultry air. Whence, no one could tell, but sleep was impossible till near daybreak, when the wearied eyes closed for a little, and a cool breeze passed through the tent.

Jussoo's shiny face peeped into the small sholdarry to give the news that the calf had been killed at earliest dawn. A cup of hot tea and a rapid toilet did not take long, and fresh loading was put into the two rifles, one a single 8-bore, the other a Westley-Richards double 16-bore, with which the rifle prize had been won. Now came the critical time, when the machan had to be mounted without the tiger knowing, as, if he heard people near his kill climbing trees or cutting sticks, he

would certainly suspect a trap and not return any more. Jussoo, carrying some eatables in a basket, went up the path by the stream, making the peculiar call which gualas always make to lead their cattle. The tree was silently swarmed and rifles handed up, and Jussoo went away quickly by another path, still calling to his cattle, till his voice died away in the far distance. The day was long and sultry, and the limbs wearied with the constrained attitude. Not a cough or a move could be indulged in, nor yet tobacco if success was to be secured. Luckily, for a wonder, the flies even were too sleepy and overpowered by the heat to trouble much, though some did buzz persistently about one's nose, and could not be beaten off, as the movement of the hand would surely betray one's whereabouts. Nothing but the hope of securing the man-eater which had killed two or three hundred human beings, and had evaded well-laid plans already many times, and escaped from the snares of the clever and plucky Gurkhas for three seasons, could have induced a comfort-loving mortal to endure to the end. Twice had he escaped when whole nights had been spent on the watch for this terrible destroyer of families, this scourge of mankind. Once he had come when the moon was gone down, and the crunching of the bones was the uncertain mark to fire at. Once, in the winter, it had snowed all night, and in a tree it was cold. It was not cold now, and patience was the only virtue to be hung for.

Well, patience was rewarded, for about three o'clock in the afternoon, after sleep had nearly come unbidden, with the risk of a dangerous fall (finger on trigger and two full-cocked rifles balanced on shaky boughs), there came to the ear faint, uncertain indications that something was on foot. About three o'clock is the time when