he neighbouring villages. She was a
comely maiden, plump and round, and light of colour, with a merry face
to cheer, and willing fingers wherewith to serve a husband. The wedding
portion was paid, a feast proportionate to Haji Ali's wealth was held to
celebrate the occasion, and the bride was carried off, after a decent
interval, to her husband's home among the fruit groves and the
palm-trees. This was not the general custom of the land, for among
Malays the husband usually shares his father-in-law's house for a long
period after his marriage. But Haji Ali had a fine new house of his own,
brave with wattled walls stained cunningly in black and white, and with
a luxuriant covering of thatch. Moreover, he had taken the daughter of a
poor man to wife, and could dictate his own terms to her and to her
parents. The girl went willingly enough, for she was exchanging poverty
for wealth, a miserable hovel for a handsome home, and parents who knew
exactly how to get out of her the last fraction of work of which she was
capable, for a husband who seemed ever kind, generous, and indulgent.
None the less, three days later she was found beating on the door of her
parents' house, at the hour when dawn was breaking, trembling in every
limb, with her hair disordered, her garments drenched with dew from the
brushwood through which she had forced her way, with her eyes wild with
horror, and mad with a great fear. Her story--the first act in the drama
of the Were-Tiger of Slim--ran in this wise, though I shall not attempt
to reproduce the words or the manner in which she told it, brokenly,
with shuddering sobs, to her awe-stricken parents.

She had gone home with Haji Ali to the house where he dwelt with his two
sons, Abdulrahman and Abas, and all had treated her kindly and with
courtesy. The first day she cooked the rice ill, but though the young
men grumbled, Haji Ali said never a word of blame, when she had expected
blows, such as would have fallen to the lot of most wives under similar
circumstances. She had no complaint to make of her husband's kindness,
but none the less she had fled his dwelling, and her parents might 'hang
her on high, sell her in a far land, scorch her with the sun's rays,
immerse her in water, burn her with fire,' but never again would she
return to one who hunted by night as a Were-Tiger.

Every evening after the Isa[9] Haji Ali had left the house on one
pretext or another, and had not returned until an hour be