“Of course he might have, my dear! What else would be the fun of it? Without that the thing would be no better than this shooting of pigeons and pheasants that men do in this country under the so-called name of sport. You had to kill him, you know. He’s first cousin—the man-eating, or rather woman-eating tiger—to a sort that I understand abounds in the Zoological Gardens called English society. If the woman be poor, he devours her at once. If she be rich he marries her, and eats her slowly up at his ease in his den.”

As much as he was taken with the daughter of the house, the major disliked the fine gentleman visitor that seemed to be dangling after her. Who he was, or in what capacity he was there, he did not know, but almost from first sight, he profoundly disliked him. His dislike grew as he saw more of Vavasor’s admiration for Hester. He might be a woman-eater himself, like the tiger, and after her money—if she had any. Such suspects must be watched and followed and their haunts marked.

“But,” said Hester, “I should like to understand the thing a little better. I am not willing to set myself down as a coward. Tell me, major Marvel—when you know that a beast may have you down, and begin eating you at any moment, what is it that keeps you up? What have you to fall back upon? Is it principle, or faith, or what is it?”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the major, “a metaphysician in the very bosom of my family! I had not reckoned upon that! I cannot exactly say that it is principle, and I am sure it is not faith. You don’t think about it at all. Well, I daresay there comes in something of principle!—that as an Englishman you are sent to that benighted quarter of the world to kill their big vermin for them, poor things! But no, you don’t think of it at the time. You’ve got to kill him—that’s all. And then when he comes roaring on, your rifle jumps to your shoulder of itself.”

“Do you make up your mind beforehand that if the animal should kill you, it is all right?” asked Hester.

“By no means,” answered the major laughing.

“Unless I had made up my mind that if I was killed it was all right,” said Hester, “I couldn’t meet the tiger.”

“But you see, my dear,” said the major, “you do not know what it is like to have confidence in your eye and your rifle. It is a form of power that you soon come to feel as resting in yourself—a power to destroy the thing that opposes you.”

Hester fell to thinking and the talk went on without her. She never heard the end of the story, but was roused by the laughter that followed it.