tiptoe, aware that this mysterious and suggestive way of walking has a
marked effect on children in the dark. "I did not shoot it," he said,
"because I lived with it. It was the most extraordinary tiger that was
ever known--"

"In India?"

"In the world. And I ought to know, because, as I say, I lived with it
for days--"

"Inside it?"

"Nearly, but not quite. I lived in its cave with the cubs and other
things, half-eaten deer and cows and the bones of Hindus--"

"Were the bones black? However did you escape? Why didn't the tiger
eat you?"

He drew the children closely round him on the sofa. "I'll tell you,"
he said, "for this is an inaugural occasion, and I've never told the
story before to any one in the world. The experience was incredible,
and no one would believe it. But the proof that it really happened is
that the tiger has left its mark upon me till I die--"

"But you haven't died--yet, I mean," Maria observed.

"He means teeth, silly," Tim squelched her.

"Died in another sense than the one you mean," the great soldier and
former administrator of a province continued, "dyed yellow--"