"Ah! There is the old chap who spoke to us last time. Let us stop at
once, and talk with him."
"So you are back again," the peasant said, as they came up to him.
"Yes," Surajah replied. "We told you we should come back here, unless
we got news of some tiger being marked down near one of the other
villages. We have been as far as the edge of the jungle, and although
we have heard of several, not one of them seems to be in the habit of
coming back regularly to the same spot; so we thought we could not do
better than return here, at once, and make it our headquarters.
"I see you have got some soldiers here."
"Yes," the old man said, discontentedly, "and a rough lot they are.
They demand food, and instead of paying for it in money, their officer
gives us bits of paper with some writing on them. He says that, when
they go, we are to take them to him, and he will give us an order
equal to the whole of them, for which we can receive money from the
treasury at Seringapatam.
"A nice thing, that! None of us have ever been to Seringapatam, and
should not know what to do when we got there. Moreover, there would be
no saying whether one would ever come back again. It is terrible.
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