r!' they gasped simultaneously.

"One of them said he had heard a stifled scream in the night, but had
thought it merely some animal in the jungle. The whole thing was a
mystery. How I came to sleep undisturbed through it all, how I escaped
the same fate, and why the tiger did not carry off his prey----"

"You are sure it was a tiger?" I put in.

"I think there was no doubt of it," Sir Alister replied. "The Bhils
swore the teeth-marks were unmistakable, and not only that, but I saw
another case seven years later. The body of a young woman was found in
the compound outside my bungalow, done to death in precisely the same
way. And several of the natives testified as to there being a tiger in
that vicinity, for they had found three or four young goats destroyed in
similar fashion."

"Who was the girl?" I asked.

Moeran slowly turned his lucent, amber eyes upon me as he answered. "She
was a German, a sort of nursery governess at the English doctor's. He
was naturally frightfully upset about it, and a regular panic sprang up
in the neighbourhood. The natives got a superstitious scare--thought
one of their gods was wroth about something and demanded sacrifice; but
the white people were simply out to kill the tiger."

"And did they?" I queried eagerly.

Sir Alister shook his head. "That I can't say, as I left the place very
soon afterwards and went up to the mountains."

A long silence followed, during which I stared at him in mute
fascination. Then an unaccountable impulse made me say abruptly:
"Moeran, how old are you?"

His finely-marked eyebrows went up in surprise at the irrelevance of my
question, but he smiled.

"Funny you should ask! It so happens that it's my birthday to-morrow. I
shall be thirty-five."

"Thirty-five!" I repeated. Then with a shiver I rose from my seat. The
room seemed to have turned suddenly cold.

"Come," I said, "let's go to bed."

* * * * *

Next night at dinner I proposed Sir Alister's health, and we all drank
to him and his "bride-to-be." They had that day definitely settled the
date of their marriage for two months ahead; Ethne was looking radiant
and everyone seemed in the best of spirits.

We danced and romped and played rowdy games like a pack of children.
Nothing was too silly for us to attempt. While a one-step was in full
swing some would-be wag suddenly turned off all the lights. It was then
that for a moment I caught sight of a pair of g