Soldiers, guards, engineers, travellers, and crowds of natives surrounded me, and at every station the guard’s van, with my novel menagerie, was the centre of attraction.  I sold the cubs to Jamrach’s agent in Calcutta for a very satisfactory price.  Two of them were very powerful, finely marked, handsome animals; the third had always been sickly, had frequent convulsions, and died a few days after I sold it.  I was afterwards told that the milk diet was a mistake, and that I should have fed them on raw meat.  However, I was very well satisfied on the whole with the result of my adventure.

I had another in the same part of the country, which at the time was a pretty good test of the state of my nerves.

I was camped out at the village of Purindaha, on the edge of a gloomy sal forest, which was reported to contain numerous leopards.  The villagers were a mixed lot of low-caste Hindoos, and Nepaulese settlers.  They had been fighting with the factory, and would not pay up their rents, and I was trying, with every probability of success, to make an amicable arrangement with them.  At all events, I had so far won them round, that they were willing to talk to me.  They came to the tent and listened quietly, and except on the subject of rent, we got on in the most friendly manner.

It was the middle of April.  The heat was intense.  The whole atmosphere had that coppery look which denotes extreme heat, and the air was loaded with fine yellow dust, which the daily west wind bore on its fever laden wings, to disturb the lungs and tempers of all good Christians.  The kanats, or canvas walls of the tent, had all been taken down for coolness, and my camp bed lay in one corner, open all round to the outside air, but only sheltered from the dew.  It had been a busy day.  I had been going over accounts, and talking to the villagers till I was really hoarse.  After a light dinner I lay down on my bed, but it was too close and hot to sleep.  By and bye the various sounds died out.  The tom-toming ceased in the village.  My servants suspended their low muttered gossip round the cook’s fire, wrapped themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber.  ‘Toby,’ ‘Nettle,’ ‘Whisky,’ ‘Pincher,’ and my other terriers, resembled so many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams.  Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din.  At intervals, the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance.  I tossed restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off into an uneasy fitful sleep.  I know not how long I had been dozing, but of a sudden I felt myself wide awake, though with my eyes yet firmly closed.