They are Mr. and Mrs. B, an internal revenue officer and his wife, who, having heard of my arrival, have come to invite me to dinner.  Of course I am delighted, and they are equally pleased to entertain one about whose adventures they have recently been reading.  Their ayah saw me ride in, and went and told her mistress of seeing a “wonderful Sahib on wheels,” and already the report has spread that I have come down from Lahore in four days!

A very agreeable evening is spent at Mr. E ’s house, talking about the incidents of my journey, Mr. E ’s tiger-hunting exploits in the neighborhood, and kindred topics.  Mr. R devotes a good deal of time in the winter season to hunting tigers in the jungle round about his station, and numerous fine trophies of his prowess adorn the rooms of his house.  He knows of the man-eater’s depredations in the village I passed to-day, and also of another one ahead which I shall go through to-morrow; he declares his intention of bagging them both next season.

Mrs. R arrived from Merrie England but eighteen months ago, a romantic girl whose knowledge of royal Bengal tigers was confined to the subdued habitues of sundry iron-barred cages in the Zoo.  She is one of those dear confiding souls that we sometimes find out whose confidence in the omnipotent character of their husbands’ ability is nothing if not charming and sublime.  Upon her arrival in the wilds of Bengal she was fascinated with the loveliness of the country, and wanted her liege lord to take her into the depths of the jungle and show her a “real wild tiger.”  She had seen tigers in cages, but wanted to see how a real wild one looked in his native lair.  One day they were out taking horseback exercise together, when, a short distance from the road, the horrible roar of a tiger awoke the echoes of the jungle and reverberated through the hills like rolling thunder.  Now was the long-looked-for opportunity, and her husband playfully invited her to ride with him toward the spot whence came the roars.  Mrs. R, however, had suddenly changed her mind.

Mrs. R was the first white lady the people of many of the outlying villages had ever seen on horseback, or perhaps had ever seen at all, and the timidest of them would invariably bolt into the jungle at her appearance.  When her husband or any other Englishman went among them alone, the native women would only turn away their faces, but from the lady herself they would hastily run and hide.  Here, also, I learn that the natives in this district are dying by the hundred with a malignant type of fever; that the present season is an exceptionally sickly one, all of which gives reason for congratulation at my own health being so good.