r has been reported the evidence hardly warrants the
assumption that it represents a distinct species.

We hunted the animal for five weeks. The brute ranged in the vicinity of
two or three villages about seven miles apart, but was seen most frequently
near Lung-tao. He was as elusive as a will o' the wisp, killing a dog or
goat in one village and by the time we had hurried across the mountains
appearing in another spot a few miles away, leaving a trail of terrified
natives who flocked to our camp to recount his depredations. He was in
truth the "Great Invisible" and it seemed impossible that we should not get
him sooner or later, but we never did.

Once we missed him by a hair's breadth through sheer bad luck, and it was
only by exercising almost superhuman restraint that we prevented ourselves
from doing bodily harm to the three Chinese who ruined our hunt. Every
evening for a week we had faithfully taken a goat into the "Long Ravine,"
for the blue tiger had been seen several times near this lair. On the
eighth afternoon we were in the "blind" at three o'clock as usual. We had
tied a goat to a tree nearby and her two kids were but a few feet away.

The grass-filled lair lay shimmering in the breathless heat, silent save
for the echoes of the bleating goats. Crouched behind the screen of
branches, for three long hours we sat in the patchwork shade,--motionless,
dripping with perspiration, hardly breathing,--and watched the shadows
steal slowly down the narrow ravine.

It was a wild place which seemed to have been cut out of the mountain side
with two strokes of a mighty ax and was choked with a tangle of thorny
vines and sword grass. Impenetrable as a wall of steel, the only entrance
was by the tiger tunnels which drove their twisting way through the
murderous growth far in toward its gloomy heart.

The shadows had passed over us and just reached a lone palm tree on the
opposite hillside. By that I knew it was six o'clock and in half an hour
another day of disappointment would be ended. Suddenly at the left and just
below us there came the faintest crunching sound as a loose stone shifted
under a heavy weight; then a rustling in the grass. Instantly the captive
goat gave a shrill bleat of terror and tugged frantically at the rope which
held it to the tree.

At the first sound Harry had breathed in my ear "Get ready, he's coming." I
was half kneeling with my heavy .405 Winchester pushed forward and the
hammer up. T