Two or three days after, the tiger presented himself at her house and was duly married to the daughter.  After the wedding the couple started for the tiger’s home; all the way the unhappy bride wept and sang:—­

    “How far off is our home, big head?”

“You can just see the mouth of the cave” answered the tiger and in a short time they came to a large cave.  Then the tiger told her to set to work and cook a feast while he went off and invited his friends to come and share it.  But the bride when left alone caught a cat and killed it and hung it over the fire, so that its blood dropped slowly into the pan and made a fizzling noise, as if cooking were going on; and then she ran off to her mother’s house and climbed a tree which grew near it and began to sing:—­

    “You married me to a ti-ti-tiger: 
    You threw me to a bear: 
    Take back the necklace you gave me
    Take back the bracelet and the diamonds and the coral.”

Meanwhile the tiger returned with his friends and sat down outside the cave and told his wife to be quick with the cooking of the cakes for he heard the hissing over the fire and thought that she was cooking.  At last as she did not come out, he got tired of waiting and went in to fetch her:  then he saw that she had disappeared and had to go and tell his friends.  They were very angry at being cheated out of a feast, and fell upon the tiger and beat him, till he ran away and was seen no more:  but his bride was left to flit from tree to tree singing:—­

    “You married me to a ti-ti-tiger: 
    You threw me to a bear: 
    Take back the necklace you gave me
    Take back the bracelet and the diamonds and the coral.”

XLVI.  The Killing of the Tiger.

They say that there was a time when all living things had a common speech and animals and men could understand each other, and in those days there was a man-eating tiger which infested a jungle through which a highroad ran; it preyed on people passing along the road till no one ventured to travel, and as the country was so unsafe, the people went in a body to the Raja and told him of the ravages of the tiger and asked him to send a force of soldiers to hunt and shoot it.

So the Raja called together all his soldiers and promised to give half his kingdom to any one of them who would kill the tiger, but not one of them was brave enough to make the attempt; they said that their business was to fight men and not tigers and leopards; then the Raja extended his offer to all his subjects and the petitioners went home to consult about it; and the news was published that the Raja would give half his kingdom to the slayer of the tiger.