e worn as an ornament claws that had
killed lots of people--women and children too."

"No, I never thought of that, Miss Hannay; it wouldn't have been
pleasant, now one thinks of it; still, I wish I had put a bullet into
him."

"No doubt you will do better next time, Mr. Wilson. The Doctor has been
telling me that it is extremely difficult to hit an animal in the dark
when you are not accustomed to that sort of shooting. He says he was in
a great fright all the time he was lying in the cage, and that it was an
immense relief to him when he heard your rifles go off, and found that
he wasn't hit."

"That is too bad of him, Miss Hannay," Wilson laughed; "we were not such
duffers as all that. I don't believe he really did think so."

"I am sure he was in earnest, Mr. Wilson. He said he should have felt
quite safe if it had been daylight, but that in the dark people really
can't see which way the rifles are pointed, and that he remembered he
had not told you to put phosphorus on the sights."

"It was too bad of him," Wilson grumbled; "it would have served him
right if one of the bullets had hit a timber of the cage and given him
a start; I should like to have seen the Doctor struggling in the dark
to get his second rifle from under the woman, with the tiger clawing and
growling two feet above him."

"The Doctor didn't tell me about that," Isobel laughed; "though he said
he had a woman and child with him to attract the tiger."

"It would have frightened any decent minded tiger, Miss Hannay, instead
of attracting it; for such dismal yells as that woman made I never
listened to. I nearly tumbled off the tree at the first of them, it made
me jump so, and it gave me a feeling of cold water running down my back.
As to the child, I don't know whether she pinched it or the doctor stuck
pins into it, but the poor little brute howled in the most frightful
way. I don't think I shall ever want to go tiger shooting in the dark
again; I ache all over today as if I had been playing in the first
football match of the season, from sitting balancing myself on that
branch; I was almost over half a dozen times."

"I expect you nearly went off to sleep, Mr. Wilson."

"I think I should have gone to sleep if it hadn't been for that woman,
Miss Hannay. I should not have minded if I could have smoked, but to
sit there hour after hour and not be able to smoke, and not allowed to
speak, and staring all the time into the darkness till your ey