lly disliked. Still, they generally work their way to the
front in the long run. Well, I must be off."

Bathurst rode to Narkeet without drawing rein. His horse at times
slackened its pace on its own accord, but an almost mechanical motion
from its rider's heel soon started it off again at the rapid pace at
which its rider ordinarily traveled. From the time he left Deennugghur
to his arrival at Narkeet no thought of the dreaded man eater entered
Bathurst's mind. He was deeply meditating on a memorandum he was about
to draw up, respecting a decision that had been arrived at in a case
between a Talookdar in his district and the Government, and in which, as
it appeared to him, a wholly erroneous and unjust view had been taken
as to the merits of the case; and he only roused himself when the horse
broke into a walk as it entered the village. Two or three of the head
men, with many bows and salutations of respect, came out to receive him.

"My lord sahib has seen nothing of the tiger?" the head man said; "our
hearts were melted with fear, for the evil beast was heard roaring in
the jungle not far from the road early this morning."

"I never gave it a thought, one way or the other," Bathurst said, as he
dismounted. "I fancy the horse would have let me know if the brute had
been anywhere near. See that he is tied up in the shed, and has food and
water, and put a boy to keep the flies from worrying him. And now let us
get to business. First of all, I must go through the village records
and documents; after that I will question four or five of the oldest
inhabitants, and then we must go over the ground. The whole question
turns, you know, upon whether the irrigation ditch mentioned in the
Talookdar's grant is the one that runs across at the foot of the rising
ground on his side, or whether it is the one that sweeps round on this
side of the grove with the little temple in it. Unfortunately most of
the best land lies between those ditches."

For hours Bathurst listened to the statements of the old people of the
village, cross questioning them closely, and sparing no efforts to sift
the truth from their confused and often contradictory evidence. Then he
spent two hours going over the ground and endeavoring to satisfy himself
which of the two ditches was the one named in the village records. He
had two days before taken equal pains in sifting the evidence on the
other side.

"I trust that my lord sees there can be no doubt as t