ilence. But the highest virtue of all
exists in his whiskers. They are mighty talismans. Chopped up in food,
they act as a slow poison, which no doctor can detect, no antidote guard
against. They are also a sovereign remedy against magic or the evil eye.
And administered to women, they make an irresistible philtre, a puissant
love-potion. They secure you the heart of whoever drinks them.'

'I'd give a couple of monkeys for those whiskahs,' Lord Southminster
murmured, half unnoticed.

We began to move again. 'We'll go on to where we know there is another
tiger,' the Maharajah said, lightly, as if tigers were partridges. 'Miss
Cayley, you will come with us?'

I rested on my laurels. (I was quivering still from head to foot.) 'No,
thank you, Maharajah,' as unconcernedly as I could; 'I've had quite
enough sport for my first day's tiger-hunting. I think I'll go back now,
and write a newspaper account of this little adventure.'

'You have had luck,' he put in. 'Not everyone kills a tiger his first
day out. This will make good reading.'

'I wouldn't have missed it for a hundred pounds,' I answered.

'Then try another.'

'I wouldn't try another for a thousand,' I cried, fervently. That
evening, at the palace, I was the heroine of the day. They toasted me in
a bumper of Heidsieck's dry monopole. The men made speeches. Everybody
talked gushingly of my splendid courage and my steadiness of hand. It
was a brilliant shot, under such difficult circumstances. For myself, I
said nothing. I pretended to look modest. I dared not confess the
truth--that I never fired at all. And from that day to this I have never
confessed it, till I write it down now in these confiding memoirs.

[Illustration: IT'S I WHO AM THE WINNAH.]

One episode cast a gloom over my ill-deserved triumph. In the course of
the evening, a telegram arrived for the pea-green young man by a
white-turbaned messenger. He read it, and crumpled it up carelessly in
his hand. I looked inquiry. 'Yaas,' he answered, nodding. 'You're quite
right. It's that! Pooah old Marmy has gone, aftah all! Ezekiel and
Habakkuk have carried off his sixteen stone at last! And I don't mind
telling yah now--though it was a neah thing--it's _I_ who am the
winnah!'

X

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CROSS-EYED Q.C.

The 'cold weather,' as it is humorously called, was now drawing to a
close, and the young ladies in sailor hats and cambric blouses, who
flock to India each autumn for the an