Till-: TIGER. 295 



shikdri should go to see the result, untying and I (ring- 

 ing in those that have not been taken, and following 

 up the tracks from any that have, so far as to ascertain 

 fully whereabouts the tiger is likely to be found later in 

 the day. I have mentioned above the " Liilhl," and 

 that brings me to the subject of shikdrls. A really 

 first-class tiger shikdri is extremely rare. The combi- 

 nation of qualities required to make him is seldom 

 found in a native. I shall best explain what he should 

 be by describing the Lalla. And first as to his name. 

 *'LdlIa" means in upper India a clerk of the Kayat caste, 

 to which our friend belonged ; so that though utterly 

 ignorant of all letters save those imprinted on a sandy 

 ravine-bed by a tiger's paw, he was nicknamed the 

 Lalla by the people, and thereupon his real name 

 disappeared for ever ; and, when he was afterwards 

 killed by a tiger, no one had any idea what it was. 

 He was a little, wee man, so insignificant and so dried 

 and shrivelled up that, as he used to say, " No tiger 

 would ever think of eating me." His early days had 

 been passed in catching and training falcons for the 

 nobles of upper India, and in shooting birds for sale in 

 the market. He had come down to Central India to 

 make a bag of blue rollers and kingfishers, whose 

 feathers are so much valued in the countries to the 

 east for fancy work, when he was caught, nobody knows 

 how, by a gentleman with a taste for bird-stufiing, 

 from whom he passed into the possession of a sportsman 

 who put him on tigers, and eventually he came to me 

 with a little experience of the business. His early 

 training had made him exceedingly keen of eyesight, 

 and in reading the signs of the forest ; while in his 

 many w^anderings he had accumulated a store of legends 

 of demons and devilry, and a wdld jumble of Hindu 



