"I know the Khan to be as arrant a coward as ever breathed," said my father to me; "but come, let us see what he will do, for I confess I am anxious to behold him capering before the tigress." "By Alla!" said I, "if he does perform such antics, the brute will dine on him to a certainty." "That is no concern of ours," said my father; "it is a matter of destiny; but I would venture a great deal, he never goes within an arrow's flight of him." We all set out headed by Dildar Khan, who still flourished his long sword, holding his matchlock in his left hand, now and then smoothing up his moustachios, which grew, or had been trained to stick upwards from his lips, and reached nearly to his eyes. We soon reached the jungle, and on entering it, I thought the Khan showed signs of fear. "The beast can be but a panther after all," said he, "and it is hardly worth the while of Dildar Khan to put himself to trouble. See, boys," continued he to some of us; "I will wait here; if it should really turn out to be a tiger you can let me know, and I will come and kill it." Against this, however, we all protested, and declared that all would go wrong without him; and after some demur he again proceeded. "I told you," said my father, "how it would be; but let us see how he will end the affair." We went on till some bones and torn clothes, and the head of one of the unfortunate men who had been killed, lying near a bush, proved very plainly that the animal was not far off, and at these the Khan showed fresh signs of fear. "They say it is a Purrut Bagh," said he, "a beast into whom the unsainted soul of that mad Fakeer, that son of the Shitan, Shah Yacoob, has entered, and that it is proof against shot. Why should we risk our lives in contention with the devil?" "Nay, Khan," said a young dare-devil lad, the scamp of the village, "you are joking, who ever heard of a Purrut Bagh that was a female? besides, we will burn the beards of fifty Shah Yacoobs." "Peace!" cried the Khan, "be not irreverent; do we not all know that Purrut Baghs can be created? Mashalla! did I not see one near Asseergurh, which a Fakeer had made, and turned loose on the country, because they would not supply him with a virgin from every village?" "What was it like?" cried a dozen of us, and for a moment the real tigress was forgotten. "Like!" said the Khan, rubbing up his mustachios with one hand, and pressing down his waistband with the other, "like! why it had a head twice the size of any other tiger, and teeth each a cubit long, and eyes red as coals, which looked like torches at night; and it had no tail, and,----" But here he was stopped short, and our laughter too, by a loud roar from a short distance; and a moment afterwards, the tigress and a half-grown cub, rushed past us with their tails in the air. "Well, Khan," said the lad before-mentioned, "that is no Purrut Bagh at any rate; did you not see the tail of the big one, how she shook it at you?"