24 Incidents of Foreign Field Sport. 



woman too much tongue got she tell me Kam- 

 asawmy dead eaten by a tiger- and I marry her, 

 but she too much bobbery make, and now Kamasawmy 

 comeback, he may take her again." Here the woman 

 was nearly flying at him ; but the more she stormed 

 and raved, the more the servants laughed, and at last 

 I had to dismiss them all and tell them to settle 

 amongst themselves whether the claimant was Kam- 

 asawmy or not. In the afternoon the butler told me 

 that they had questioned the old man, that there was 

 no doubt he was my former maty boy, but that fright 

 had blanched his hair, want of food and exposure to 

 the weather for several months had doubled him up 

 with rheumatism, that he was now half-witted but 

 harmless, and if I sent him away he would die of 

 starvation, "for who would employ him, Sahib ?" So 

 I told him to let the poor fellow have a " godown." 

 He did a little work now and then, but often he 

 wandered away no one knew where, and would be 

 absent for days at a time, for a week or more. 

 Occasionally woodcutters would bring him in and say 

 they had found him in the depths of the forest and 

 were afraid he would be killed. But if this was 

 said in his hearing he would rejoin that he was 

 already dead, and had been eaten, and nothing 

 could hurt him again this went on for a year or 

 two. The man was truly harmless, so was allowed 

 to do as he liked, but one day he disappeared 

 for good and was never heard of again ; the forest 

 and wild beasts he had so dreaded, had a strange 

 fascination for him, and whether he died, or was 

 eventually killed and eaten, I cannot say. In the 

 meantime his wife was the cause of so much dis- 



