rer that becomes. Carlin didn't advise with Skag
whether she should speak of the matter. She merely decided that her
old friend, Malcolm M'Cord, Hand-of-a-God, deserved to be told. The
silent Scot knew much about animals and this was an affair that would
stand high in his collection of musings and memories. M'Cord observed,
in a Scotch that had suffered no thinning in thirty years of India,
that if he hadn't known Hantee Sahib he would be forced to pass by
Carlin's report as an invention, though a "fertile" one. It was M'Cord
who decided that Government should get at least a private account of
the affair.

A remarkable tiger pair had operated for several years in the broken
cliff country stretching away toward the valley of the Nerbudda beyond
the open jungle round Hurda. As mates they had pulled together so
efficiently that the natives had started the interminable process of
making a tradition concerning them. These were superb young
individuals and not man-eaters, for which reason Hand-of-a-God had not
been called out to deliver the natives; also on this account Skag had
been interested from the beginning.

Their lair had never been found, but they had been seen together and
singly over a ranging ground that covered seventy miles and contained
several dejected villages. Once, hard pressed for game, the male tiger
had entered a village grazing ground and made a quick kill--on the
run--of one of the little sacred cows--a tan heifer much loved by the
people. The point of comment was that the tiger had spared the boy; in
fact, the young herder had been unable to run so rapidly as his little
drove, which was lost in a dust cloud ahead of him. The tiger had
actually passed him by, entered the drove, knocked the heifer down and
stood over it as the boy circled past.

There were no firearms in the village, so that the natives did not
venture close in the falling darkness. It was evident next day,
however, that the tiger had not fed on the spot of the kill. It was
supposed that the female had come to help him carry away the game.

Also, this was the same tiger pair that had leaped an eight-foot wall
surrounding another village, made their choice of a sizable bullock in
a herd of ordinary cattle, and actually helped each other drag the
carcass over the wall and away--a daylight raid, this, witnessed from
the shadows of several village huts.

So the stories went, but nothing monotonous about them. Often for
mo