beast per million of inhabitants.  The compelling motive for her sudden
deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that
Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an
aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a
personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Press photographs
could successfully counter that sort of thing.  Mrs. Packletide
had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her
house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in Loona Bimberton's honour,
with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the foreground and all of
the conversation.  She had also already designed in her mind the
tiger-claw broach that she was going to give Loona Bimberton on
her next birthday.  In a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed
by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her
movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona
Bimberton.

  Circumstances  proved  propitious.  Mrs.  Packletide  had  offered  a
thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without over-much
risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring
village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal
of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing
infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite
to the smaller domestic animals.  The prospect of earning the
thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct
of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the
outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely
event of his attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and
the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness
to keep him satisfied with his present quarters.  The one great
anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed
for the memsahib's shoot.  Mothers carrying their babies home
through the jungle after the day's work in the fields hushed their
singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the venerable
herd-robber.

  The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless.  A platform
had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed
tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion,
Miss Mebbin.  A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent
bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected
to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance.
With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumb-nail pack of
patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry.

  ``I suppose we are in some danger?'' said Miss Mebbin.

  She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had
a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had
been paid for.

  ``Nonsense,'' said Mrs. Packletide; ``it's a very old tiger.  It couldn't
spring up here even if it wanted to.''

  ``If it's an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper.  A thousand
rupees is a lot of money.''

  Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards
money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination.  Her
energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself
in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung
to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven
them headlong from less sympathetic hands.  Her speculations as to
the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the
appearance on the scene of the animal itself.  As soon as it caught
sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth, seemingly less from
a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the purpose
of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack.

  ``I believe it's ill,'' said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani, for
the benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring
tree.

  ``Hush!'' said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced
ambling towards his victim.

  ``Now, now!'' urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; ``if he
doesn't touch the goat we needn't pay for it.'' (The bait was an
extra.)

  The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny
beast sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness of
death.  In a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on
to the scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news
to the village, where a thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus
of triumph.  And their triumph and rejoicing found a ready echo in
the heart of Mrs. Packletide; already that luncheon-party in Curzon
Street seemed immeasurably nearer.

  It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the
goat was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no
trace of the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger.  Evidently
the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had
succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle,
accelerated by senile decay.  Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed
at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a
dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees,
gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast. And
Miss Mebbin was a paid companion.  Therefore did Mrs. Packletide
face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured fame reached
from the pages of the _Texas Weekly Snapshot_ to the illustrated