Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs packletide had offered a 1000 rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without over much risk or excretion, and it so happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing infirmitives of age to abandon game killing and confine its appetite to the smaller domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children wear posted night and day on the outskirts of the local Jungle to head the tiger black in the unlikely event of the attempting to roam a way to fresh hunting grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed for memsahib's shoot. Mother carrying their babies home though the jungle after the day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the respected tiger.
The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless . A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs packletide and her paid companion, miss mebbin. A goat ,gifted with a particularly persistent bleat such as even a partial in the tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a term nail pack of patience cards the sports women awaited the coming of the quarry.