"We are shikarees, and have come here to destroy tigers.

We were arranging, with this old man, to find us guides who can point out the tracks of the one which has, for some time, been preying on their animals." "Yes, and our children," the old man put in; "for three of them were carried off, from the street here, within the last month." The soldiers looked doubtful, but one of them said: "This is for our officer to inquire about.

The men are strangers to the village, and he will want to question them." "We are quite ready to be questioned," Surajah said.

"Our host, here, will bear me out in what I say, and there are others in the village who will tell you that we have been arranging, with them, to kill tigers in this neighbourhood; though as yet we have not settled what they will pay us for each beast we destroy." Accompanied by the peasant, they went with the soldiers to the guard house, with which each of the frontier villages was provided.

It consisted of a group of huts, surrounded by a thick wall of sunburnt bricks.