r in the wood. We
were always expecting, watching, always afraid; and when hunting we were
three and four together. On that day I and three others saw her. It was
in an open place, where the trees are big and wide apart. We started
up and chased her when she ran from us, but feared to shoot. And in one
moment she climbed up into a small tree, then, like a monkey, passed
from its highest branches into a big tree. We could not see her there,
but she was there in the big tree, for there was no other tree near--no
way of escape. Three of us sat down to watch, and the other went back
to the village. He was long gone; we were just going to leave the tree,
fearing that she would do us some injury, when he came back, and with
him all the others, men, women, and children. They brought axes and
knives. Then Runi said: 'Let no one shoot an arrow into the tree
thinking to hit her, for the arrow would be caught in her hand and
thrown back at him. We must burn her in the tree; there is no way to
kill her except by fire.' Then we went round and round looking up, but
could see nothing; and someone said: 'She has escaped, flying like a
bird from the tree'; but Runi answered that fire would show. So we cut
down the small tree and lopped the branches off and heaped them round
the big trunk. Then, at a distance, we cut down ten more small trees,
and afterwards, further away, ten more, and then others, and piled them
all round, tree after tree, until the pile reached as far from the trunk
as that," and here he pointed to a bush forty to fifty yards from where
we sat.

The feeling with which I had listened to this recital had become
intolerable. The sweat ran from me in streams; I shivered like a person
in a fit of ague, and clenched my teeth together to prevent them from
rattling. "I must drink," I said, cutting him short and rising to my
feet. He also rose, but did not follow me, when, with uncertain steps, I
made my way to the waterside, which was ten or twelve yards away. Lying
prostrate on my chest, I took a long draught of clear cold water, and
held my face for a few moments in the current. It sent a chill through
me, drying my wet skin, and bracing me for the concluding part of the
hideous narrative. Slowly I stepped back to the fireside and sat down
again, while he resumed his old place at my side.

"You burnt the tree down," I said. "Finish telling me now and let me
sleep--my eyes are heavy."

"Yes. While the men cut and brought