Accordingly, the head men of the several villages which had lost inhabitants from the man-eater came forward, accompanied by the surviving relatives of those who had been carried off. These poor people, many of them with tears in their eyes, came and threw themselves at W.'s feet anxious to touch his garments or kiss his shoes. In their untaught and simple way they made poojah to him, _i.e._, they literally worshipped him as a superior being, and implored their deities to shower blessings on the brave Ingrasy Sahib who had rescued them and theirs from the fangs of the devourer. 'Well, that's enough,' said W.; 'you had better get up, now.' 'But,' replied the head men, 'we have not yet done what we came to do--we have a bag of 500 Rs. that we beg the Captain Sahib will take from us; it is contributed jointly by all the villages that have suffered.' W. knew well the general poverty of the villages, and being wholly unprepared for any such unusual demonstration from the natives, was for a moment thrown off his equanimity. He walked away a few yards, and it was observed that his eyes were moist, but he soon recovered his ordinary quiet and unmoved demeanour. Then, turning to the people kneeling and prostrate about him, he said, speaking Hindustani fluently: 'My good friends, for what I have done I am amply repaid in the consciousness of having delivered you from your enemy; besides, the search for large game is to a British officer and a sportsman a very great pleasure, and he would feel himself dishonoured if he accepted money or presents for anything he might do as a sportsman. Do not, my friends, suppose that it is from pride that I do not accept your bag of rupees; I feel grateful to you for the kindness shown in the offer, and to show my sense of it will accept from each of the villages that have suffered a pair of doves or quails. But as to money, that is out of the question. On the other hand, I am debtor to you all for the assistance and information you rendered me in the beginning in tracking and beating, and now in bringing down, the dead beast. I have ordered my head boy to pay to each of the villages 15 Rs. All I want you now to do is to lay the carcase straight, that we may measure the exact length from the nose to the tip of the tail' (which was found to be nine feet and nine inches--a grand specimen). And when this had been done, he said: 'Now all I have to ask is that you will help Ram Sing to take off the skin. Ram Sing knows all about that.'