60 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



itself among some low bush.es between tbe village and the 

 bottom of the hill, the other would go round to the top, 

 and, watching an opportunity, race down through the 

 street, picking up a child by the way, and making ofi 

 with it to the thick cover in the nala. At first the people 

 used to pursue, and sometimes made the marauder drop 

 his prey ; but, as they said, finding that in that case the 

 companion wolf usually succeeded in carrying ofi another 

 of the children in the confusion, while the first was usually 

 so injured as to be beyond recovery, they ended, like 

 phlegmatic Hindus as they were, by just letting them 

 take as many of their qfispring as they wanted ! An 

 infant a few years old had thus been carried off the 

 morning of my arrival. It is scarcely credible that I 

 could not at first obtain sufficient beaters to drive the 

 cover where these two atrocious brutes were gorging on 

 their unholy meal. At last a few of the outcaste helots 

 who act as village drudges in those parts were induced 

 to take sticks and accompany my horsekeeper with a 

 hog-spear, and my Sikh orderly with his sword, through 

 the belt of grass, while I posted myself behind a tree 

 with a double rifle at the other end. In about five 

 minutes the pair walked leisurely out into an open space 

 within twenty paces of me. They were evidently mother 

 and son; the latter about three-quarters grown, with a 

 reddish-yellow well-furred coat, and plump appearance; 

 the mother a lean and grizzled hag, with hideous pendent 

 dugs, and slaver dropping from her disgusting jaws. I 

 gave her the benefit of the first barrel, and dropped her 

 with a shot through both her shoulders. The whelp 

 started off, but the second barrel arrested him also with 

 a bullet in the neck ; and I watched with satisfaction the 

 struggles of the mother till my man came up with the 

 hog-spear, which I defiled by fiiiishing her. In the cover 

 they had come through, my men said that their lairs in 

 the grass were numerous, and filled witb fragments of 

 bones; so that there was little doubt that the brutes 

 thus so happily disposed of, had long been perfectly at 

 home in the neighbourhood of these miserable supersti- 

 tious villagers. 



