OF THE OLD AVOIILD. 57 



ceeded to tell us of the great devastation this man- 

 eater had caused in all the villages round about, and 

 he offered to give every assistance in his power to 

 enable us to find his haunts and destroy him. 



Having arranged all about the beaters to be col- 

 lected from the neighbouring villages, and ordered 

 them to be ready to take the field before dawn the 

 following morning, we went out with a party of 

 villagers to a well, about a hundred and fifty yards 

 from the village near which a woman was said to 

 have been carried off by the tiger the day before, 

 as she was drawing water in the evening about dusk. 



I examined the place attentively, and although 

 the marks of the tiger's pugs were effaced near the 

 well from a flock of goats having passed by, yet, 

 near a tamarind tree, some little distance off, they 

 were plainly visible, and even the marks of dried 

 blood, and' some long hair were left on the roots. 



I also noticed the place behind a bush, where 

 the herbage was pressed down, and the marks still 

 left in the dust showed that the cunning brute had 

 lain for some time on the look out, before he 

 seized his prey. 



Here I found Chineah, the dhoby, and the rest 

 of the gang in deep consultation, and was just in 

 time to hear the fag-end of a long string of curses, 

 maledictions, and prophecies, in which it seemed to 

 be allowed, by all parties present, that this tiger's 

 female relations were anything but a chaste lot, and 

 that he would be sure to come to a bad end. 



