the place, I am
taken completely by surprise.

They are Mr. and Mrs. B, an internal revenue officer and his wife, who,
having heard of my arrival, have come to invite me to dinner. Of course I
am delighted, and they are equally pleased to entertain one about whose
adventures they have recently been reading. Their ayah saw me ride in,
and went and told her mistress of seeing a "wonderful Sahib on wheels,"
and already the report has spread that I have come down from Lahore in
four days!

A very agreeable evening is spent at Mr. E 's house, talking about the
incidents of my journey, Mr. E 's tiger-hunting exploits in the
neighborhood, and kindred topics. Mr. R devotes a good deal of time in
the winter season to hunting tigers in the jungle round about his
station, and numerous fine trophies of his prowess adorn the rooms of his
house. He knows of the man-eater's depredations in the village I passed
to-day, and also of another one ahead which I shall go through to-morrow;
he declares his intention of bagging them both next season.

Mrs. R arrived from Merrie England but eighteen months ago, a romantic
girl whose knowledge of royal Bengal tigers was confined to the subdued
habitues of sundry iron-barred cages in the Zoo. She is one of those dear
confiding souls that we sometimes find out whose confidence in the
omnipotent character of their husbands' ability is nothing if not
charming and sublime. Upon her arrival in the wilds of Bengal she was
fascinated with the loveliness of the country, and wanted her liege lord
to take her into the depths of the jungle and show her a "real wild
tiger." She had seen tigers in cages, but wanted to see how a real wild
one looked in his native lair. One day they were out taking horseback
exercise together, when, a short distance from the road, the horrible
roar of a tiger awoke the echoes of the jungle and reverberated through
the hills like rolling thunder. Now was the long-looked-for opportunity,
and her husband playfully invited her to ride with him toward the spot
whence came the roars. Mrs. R, however, had suddenly changed her mind.

Mrs. R was the first white lady the people of many of the outlying
villages had ever seen on horseback, or perhaps had ever seen at all, and
the timidest of them would invariably bolt into the jungle at her
appearance. When her husband or any other Englishman went among them
alone, the native women would only turn away their faces, but from the
lady h