tremble, blush, and quaver, "Oh, pray, dear sir,
don't mention it!" Yet thou didst prosper!
Doubtless, Heaven did prosper thee, young fair
widow, with one sweet child, little Amy, the
gownsmen's pet! Blessings on thee for the
kindest, gentlest, truest of flatterers!

MAJOR MONSOON'S TIGER STORY.

"THANK you, I think I'll take another
cheroot, old fellow—they're a first-rate brand,
but not quite the sort I keep for my own
smoking—and pass the brandy; thank you; your
brandy's good brandy, but not very good brandy.
One can't expect it at the sea-side."

The major took another cheroot from the
frail but odorous dark cedar-box, bound with
red, and he also condescendingly filled himself a
peculiarly stiff third tumbler of brandy-and-
water. I say brandy-and-water, but the expression
is scarcely correct, for, as he told me, ever
since a fit of hydrophobia at Kollywallah, up
at the foot of the Hill Country, he had had
a strong dislike to water, and a grateful
recollection of the brandy which had preserved his
valuable life.

The major was a full-habited middle-sized
middle-aged man, with a bruised flattish red
face, rather staring blue eyes, with a noisy good-
humoured impudent manner that nothing could
daunt. He wore a straw hat and blue band, an
immense gilt double eye-glass tied with a broad
black ribbon, a loose light suit of a pale nankeen
colour, very small dancing-shoes, and carried
a large silver-mounted Penang "lawyer." I
scarcely know how I picked up the gallant officer,
but on the eighth day of my stay in Ramsgate
I had got so tired of shrimps, raffles, bathing,
using a telescope, and slopping about on weedy
rocks, that I had begun to look out for a
companion on the Esplanade seats. But he whom I
looked for in vain there, met me unsought, in
the billiard-rooms on the cliff. At that genteel
establishment, I found the major laughing, talking,
telling stories, executing unparalleled
cannons, betting condescendingly with very juvenile
boating-men, and drinking brandy-pawnee at
some young amateur commodore's expense, with
a manner as totally free from pride as it was
radiant with the urbanity of the officer and the
traveller.

The major was one of those indescribable men
who can be seen any day between four and dark
looking into the cigar-shops in Regent-street,
or lounging about the doors of billiard-rooms in
Leicester-square, dozing on seats in St. James's
Park, or reading the American news with a
severe air in Wild's reading-room: an indefinite
man of indefinite occupations. An idler tired
of himself could not, however, have discovered
a more talkative, cheery, rattling, good-natured
companion than the major. He had, like
myself, apparently found Ramsgate dull, for he
lost no opportunity of cultivating my acquaintance;
and, as he lodged only three doors from
me in Seaside-terrace, there was seldom an
evening when the major did not drop in to
take his coffee, and smoke his cigar on my
balcony.

It was on the fourth evening of our acquaintance
that the major, having lighted his fourth
cheroot, and mixed, as I have said, his third glass
of brandy-and-water, sank down luxuriously in a
rocking-chair, tucked his legs by a violent exertion
(for I should mention that he was a little
lame) on a second chair, and, with an air of
almost sultanic enjoyment, commenced the
following story of one of his most remarkable
achievements in the hunting-field:

"Twenty years ago," said the major, "I
commanded a detachment of my native
regiment, The Fighting Half-Hundred (as we were
called, from our behaviour in the Burmese war),
at a little village called Kollywallah, in the north-
east corner of the Jubbalgore district of the
Bengal Presidency. It was near a jungle, full
of tigers; and, as we soon put down the paltry
tax riots that had brought us to Kollywallah,
and time began to hang heavy on our hands, I
and Twentyman, the only other officer,
naturally took to tiger-hunting, which exciting
amusement soon became a passion with us.
In six months there was not a ryot at
Kollywallah who did not know me as 'The Great
Shikarree,' and it was all I could do to prevent
the people from worshipping me and my
hunting-elephant, 'Ramchunder.'

"One morning, when Twentyman was down
with jungle fever, and I was sitting by his side
reading him Charles O'Malley in the balcony of
our bungalow, which gave on the cantonment, I
heard a great noise as of a crowd of natives
trying to force their way in past my native
servants. Poor Twentyman, who was fretful
with want of sleep, beginning to groan and
complain at the noise, I ran out with my big
hunting-whip, and, licking the niggers all
round, asked them what they meant by making
such a cursed noise.

"'Choop ruho ekdum' ('be silent immediately'),
I shouted.

"The old khitmutgar, an old grey-bearded
fellow who had been butler to my father the
general, came salaaming forward when he saw
me, and said:

"'Sahib, sahib, the country people from
Moonje have come to ask sahib to come and
shoot a white tiger—a man-eater—who has
already killed an old woman, six children, and
ten bullocks.'

"Out I went, just as I was, in my slippers, and
sure enough at the gate of the compound, if
you'll believe me, there were about a hundred
natives, salaaming, and tom-tomming, and praying
Mahadeo to soften the sahib's heart, and
induce him to listen to them and come and kill
the white tiger. I promised to do what I could,
if they would supply beaters, and would be ready
at the jungle next day with their usual heathenish
and unsportsmanlike paraphernalia of native
drums, bells, horns, and metal pans with stones
in them. Off they went throwing somersaults,