WOLVES NURTURING CHILDREN IN THEIR DENS. 91 



rushed upon hirn suddenly from behind a bush, caught him up by 

 the loins, and made off with him towards the ravines. The 

 father was at a distance at the time, but the mother followed, 

 screaming as loud as she could for assistance. The people of 

 tho village ran to her aid, but they soon lost sight of the Wolf 

 and his prey. 



She heard nothing more of her boy for six years, and had, 

 in that interval, lost her husband. At the end of that time, 

 two sipahees came, in the month of February, 1849, from the 

 town of Singramow, which is ten miles from Chupra, on the 

 bank of the Khobae rivulet. While they sat on the border of 

 the jungle, which extended down to the stream, watching for 

 hogs, which commonly came down to drink at that time in the 

 morning, they saw there three Wolf cubs and a boy come out 

 from the jungle, and go down together to the stream to drink. 

 The sipahees watched them till they had drank, and were about 

 to return, when they rushed towards them. All four ran towards 

 a den in the ravines. The sipahees followed as fast as they 

 could, but the three cubs had got in before the sipahees could 

 come up with them, and the boy was half way in, when one of 

 the sipahees caught him by the hind leg and drew him back. He 

 seemed very angry and ferocious, bit at them, and seized in his 

 teeth the barrel of one of the guns which they put forward to 

 keep him off, and shook it. The}', however, secured him, 

 brought him home, and kept him for twenty days. They could, 

 for that time, make him eat nothing but raw flesh, and they fed 

 him upon hares and birds. They found it difficult to provide 

 him with sufficient food, and took him to the bazaar, in the vil- 

 lage of Koeleepoor, and there let him go, to be fed by the chari- 

 table people of the place, till he might be recognised and claimed 

 by liis parents. One market-day, a man from the village of 

 Chupra happened to see him in the bazaar, and on his return 

 mentioned the circumstance to his neighbours. The poor culti- 

 vator's widow, on hearing this, asked him to describe the boy more 

 minutely ; when she found that the boy had the mark of a scald 

 on the left knee, and three marks of the teeth of an animal on 

 each side of his loins. The widow told him that her hoy, when 

 taken off, had lately recovered from a scald on the left knee, and 

 was seized by the loins when the Wolf took him off, and that the 

 boy he had seen must be her lost child. 



