TIGER-HAUNTED JUNGLES 27 



hundred rupees reward was offered for his skin. The 

 story goes that this tiger was the son of a previous man- 

 eating tigress which had been shot some years before by 

 the Gurkhas. She had been for years the terror of the 

 Juh road, and many dak runners who carried the post- 

 bags from Naini Tal to the foot of the hills had been 

 carried off. The Commissioner then ordered two dak 

 runners to be employed, armed with sword and pistol ; 

 yet on one occasion the tiger sprang upon the leading man 

 who carried the bag, and was only beaten off with great 

 difficulty by his plucky companion, who carried his hhai 

 to the next chauki on his back. The poor man was badly 

 mauled, and the tiger's teeth-marks were through an 

 official envelope delivered next morning to the Commis- 

 sioner. One after another four brothers lost their lives. 

 Their old mother, who had lost her last son, the support 

 of her latter years, took up her abode under a rock close 

 to the road. She remained there for months. Many 

 travellers to Naini Tal saw her, and she stated that all 

 her sons' souls having now gone into tigers, she would 

 not be happy unless hers also went the same way, and 

 she prayed for a release from her lonely existence by a 

 similar death. One morning the passers-by missed the 

 old woman from her accustomed post. It was a lovely 

 spot — a dense, cool, shady dell with steep rocky sides. 

 The old woman sat always on a ledge of rock sheltered 

 by overhanging blocks, her little fire burning when she 

 cooked her daily meal of rice or boiled millet, her covering 

 a single blanket. Everyone passing knew her, and many 

 had given her pice. The Gurkhas going there soon found 

 the body in the jungle close by, freshly killed and only 

 slightly mauled. The blood had been sucked from the 

 neck in the way usual with tigers when they kill an animal. 

 The Gurkhas made two ' machans,' or nests in trees, in 



