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“Once more a party of sahibs come to shoot the man-eaters,” they exclaimed. “Ah, many sahibs had come and come and gone, and naught availed them against the Bagh. He was no Janwar—but an evil spirit.”

“But two days ago,” said the Malgoozar, or head-man—a high-caste Brahmin, with a high-bred face—“he had taken a boy from before his mother’s eyes, as she tilled the patch of vegetables; the screams of the child—he had heard them himself. Ah, ye-yo!”

And he shook his enormous orange turban, and his handsome dignified head, in a truly melancholy fashion. “Moreover, the tiger had taken the woman’s husband—there was not a house in the village that had not lost at least one inmate.”

“Why did they not go away?” I asked.

“Yea—truly, others had abandoned their houses and lands, and fled—but to what avail? The thing was not a Janwar, but a devil.”

A murmur of assent signified that the villagers had accepted their scourge, with the apathetic fatalism of their race. We were presently conducted to an empty hut, provided with broad string beds—and a light. Our Christmas dinner was simple; it consisted of chuppatties and well water, and our spirits were in keeping with our fare; the surrounding misery had infected us. We were even indebted for our present lodgings to the tiger—he had dined upon its former tenant about a month previously. By all accounts he was old, and lame of one hind leg, and had discovered that a human being is a far easier prey than nimble cattle, or fleeting deer. He had studied the habits of his victims, and would stalk the unwary, or the loiterer, like a great cat. Alas! many were the tragedies; with success he had grown bolder, and even broad noonday, and the interior of the village itself, now afforded no protection from his horrible incursions.