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Johnson was an officer in railway service who had lately been transferred to the area from some other part of India where tigers did not exit. This made him very keen to attempt to bag the beast that was the talk of the neighbourhood, and as he had a rifle he made his way to Bellundur, which was only about seven miles from the railway track, on the few days' leave during which he hoped to succeed. And this is where old Buddiah, the necromancer, comes into my story. Hearing that a white man had arrived and was making inquiries about the tiger, Buddiah donned his ceremonial saffron robe, plaited the long roll of filthy false hair that he kept for such occasions in a coil around the crown of his head, smeared ashes liberally across his forehead, which he further decorated with vermilion marks of a religious significance, hung his chain of large amber wooden beads around his neck, and holding his gnarled walking-stick, blackened by being soaked in oil, in his hand, presented himself before Johnson, offering his services, claiming that they were absolutely indispensable if the white man wished to succeed in shooting the tiger. Now the situation was really very simple. To anyone of moderate experience, it was obvious that old Buddiah was endeavouring to earn a few rupees but more than that he was taking the opportunity to impress his fellow villagers with his greatness as a magician. He wanted them to feel that even a white man had to come to him for help. If Johnson had used a little psychology and common sense, he would have recognized these things and given the old man a boost with a few rupees to humour him. Instead, Johnson lost his temper, told the magician to get out of his presence, and when Buddiah began to remonstrate indignantly, made matters worse by threatening to break his neck! So, the necromancer stalked away in fury: his prestige with the villagers, which he had been endeavouring to enhance, had been severely lessened by the white man's words. He felt his companions would laugh at him secretly, although he was still confident that they feared him too much to do so openly. The villagers, on the other hand, felt abashed. Although none of them had any liking for Buddiah who had exploited them systematically since childhood, he was, nevertheless, their own magician. One of themselves. To be spoken to in such a fashion by the white man, and to be threatened with a beating, reflected scant respect for their magician and incidentally for themselves and the village as a whole. Thus by his hasty words, Johnson had made enemies all around instead of friends. The villagers left him where he stood and refused to have anything more do with him. Nor would anyone sell or hire him a bait to tie out for the tiger. Being of a determined nature, Johnson made up his mind to succeed in spite of the local noncooperation. He made his way back to Tagarthy where, by exercising the tact he should have displayed at Bellundur, he was able to buy two ancient bulls. Engaging herdsmen, he had these two animals driven back to the outskirts of Bellundur, where he tied each up in a nullah said to be frequented by the tiger, or so he was told by the herdsmen he had engaged; but as these men were from Tagarthy and not from Bellundur, they did not know very much about the tiger's movements. The following morning Johnson and his herdsmen visited the baits. One had disappeared. It certainly had not been taken by the tiger, for there were no pug-marks to be seen in the sandy bed of the nullah, which bore a number of human footprints instead. Had these been made by his own men the previous day, or by others? The other bait had not been touched. Johnson rightly came to the conclusion that the villagers of Bellundur had stolen his first bait. He stalked into the village with a loaded rifle, demanded the return of the bull, and then threatened to inform the police. To all of which the villagers assumed an air of injured innocence. They maintained that the human footprints he had seen in the sandy ravine were those of his own men when they had tied the bait and asked him to prove otherwise. To Johnson's dire threats to shoot the thieves, the yokels turned a deaf ear and smiled. Fearing the second bait would also disappear, Johnson ordered his two men to construct a machan over it, in which he sat that same afternoon, perhaps more to protect his bait from being robbed than in the serious hope of bagging the tiger. But the unexpected happened. I am told the tiger turned up while it was _ still daylight. Johnson fired, succeeding only in wounding the animal, which got away. Throughout the next week, Johnson, with commendable determination, scoured the jungles in search of the tiger. No one came forward to assist him; even his two henchmen refused to accompany him on the plea that it was too dangerous. Unaided, the white man lost his way on one occasion and was compelled to spend the night in the forest. In the end, bitterly disappointed, Johnson had to return to duty without bagging his tiger. Everything was quiet for some time after that. The Ogre did not show up and the villagers of Bellundur had to admit that, in spite of their best efforts at noncooperation, the sahib had rid them of the pest that had been exacting such a heavy toll of their cattle. Buddiah, the magician, was more aggrieved than ever. He saw his pride and reputation at a still lower ebb, for he had announced boastfully that the sahib would not or could not shoot the tiger; he had done so nevertheless and had rid Bellundur of the hated cattle-lifter. So the cattle were driven out to the jungles once again each day for grazing. That is, until the inevitable happened! Early one afternoon a herd rushed pell-mell back to the village minus one of its members—and minus the nineteen- year-old youth who had gone out with the animals that morning to graze them. Nobody worried about the matter till nightfall. Then the relatives of the boy grew a little anxious about him, while the owner of the missing cow grew far more anxious about his valuable animal. A search the next morning revealed the cow lying dead: her neck had been neatly broken by a large tiger whose pug-marks were clearly to be seen in the field where she had been struck down. A hundred yards away, hidden under a bush, was the body of the missing youth. There was, however, this difference between the two carcases: the cow had not been eaten, while rather more than half of the youth's body had been devoured by the tiger. The familiar pattern had appeared once more: an innocent tiger had been turned into a man-eater through being wounded and left to fend for itself. Tragedy succeeded tragedy after that and the pattern of events was repeated. The people of Bellundur locked themselves in their huts at sundown while the cattle were kept starving in their pens. Old Buddiah's prestige was at its lowest ebb. Lack of human prey drove the tiger into extending his operations towards Tagarthy and more distant villages, and that was when the beast began to be referred to as ‘The Ogre,' a name that was whispered with bated breath behind locked doors and only during daylight hours. Otherwise it would surely hear and bring dreadful vengeance upon the man who dared refer to the creature as a tiger. After darkness the Ogre was about! It roamed everywhere and a man was not safe even in a locked room. The Ogre, or one of its spies, an evil spirit of the air in the form of a bat or an owl, or one of the many devils that lived in the jungle, might hear what was being said and carry words to the dreaded man-eater. Then the man who had spoken against it was indeed undone! It would be only a matter of time before the Ogre exacted a terrible revenge. His fate was sealed and there was no means of escape. That was the universal opinion. At this stage my old friend, Doctor Stanley, the medical officer of Tagarthy village, wrote a long letter to me and related this story, inviting me to join him in an attempt to end the Ogre's career. This doctor, who owned only a .12 bore shotgun and no rifle, had shot many tigers himself in his younger days, parelleling Dick Bird, the Postmaster of Santaveri, whom I have mentioned in another story. Now that he had grown older, he felt that his rather antiquated gun, although still a trusty weapon, might not be quite up to the mark for a man-eater. I met him three days later in the front room of his dispensary-cum-hospital, after motoring to Tagarthy in my Studebaker. The first thing he insisted upon was a tremendous meal, with gallons of tea, after which, over clouds of pipe-smoke, we discussed ‘old times' for about three hours. Generally long-suffering by nature, at times I become impatient; finally I reminded the good doctor that there was a job of work to be done. Obviously the first step was to visit Bellundur and pick up the trail from there. The Studebaker had a hard time to reach this village. The track, which was always bad, had become really terrible after the last rains. The doctor, who sat next to me, said we should have walked. Having reached Bellundur at last, I set about undoing, as far as possible, some of the mischief that had been done by the tactless Johnson. I called upon Buddiah, who was sulking in his hut, asked him to don his ceremonial robes and make pooja for me and repeat all the mantras he knew, to enable me to succeed in shooting the man-eater, presenting him with ten rupees to cover incidental expenses.