the linen skull-cap which he wore under his
turban, and taking his large native hunting-
knife in his mouth, so that both hands might be
free, commenced to climb up the rock, whilst at
a distance of thirty yards we sat on elephants,
rifles ready cocked in hand, watching him.

The intense anxiety and excitement of the
next five minutes I shall never forget. Again
and again did we call upon the old fellow to
come back, but he paid no attention. More
than once, in trying to get up the steep rock, he
slipped. At last he reached the small ledge
in front of the cave, and putting aside the
brushwood began to peep in. All at once, with
a roar like thunder, the tiger sprang out, and,
to us who were watching closely, the brute
seemed merely to brush past old Hassein, and
to put him aside as it sprang upon the ground
below. It never paused for an instant.

As the tiger touched the earth, not ten
yards from my elephant, a shot from Captain
Ring's rifle turned it over stone dead. We
observed that Hassein lay at the mouth of
the cave, still on his knees, but with his head
and the upper part of his body bent forward,
as if he had received a severe blow, and was
stunned by it. Two of the natives who were
with us sprang up the rock to assist the old
fellow down. Alas! they found that he was dead.
His skull had been crushed just as an egg is
chipped by an egg-spoon. The doctor who
was with us said that his death must have been
instantaneous, and this merely by the passing
blow of the tiger's fore paw. There were no
marks of scratches about the head; it was beaten
in as if by a sledge-hammer.

We took the body back to camp, and the
next day had it buried according to the usual
Moslem rites at the nearest village. On inquiry,
it was found that the poor old fellow had left a
widow and two children. For them we raised,
amongst those who had known Hassein, a
subscription of three hundred pounds, which, being
invested in house property at Meerut, gives his
family twenty rupees, or two pounds sterling, a
month, and is to them an ample fortune.

          GEORGE SILVERMAN'S
                 EXPLANATION.
          BY CHARLES DICKENS.
IN NINE CHAPTERS. FIRST CHAPTER.

It happened in this wise:

—But, sitting with my pen in my hand
looking at those words again, without descrying
any hint in them of the words that should
follow, it comes into my mind that they have
an abrupt appearance. They may serve,
however, if I let them remain, to suggest how
very difficult I find it to begin to explain my
Explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do
not see my way to a better.

            SECOND CHAPTER.

It happened in this wise:
—But, looking at those words, and comparing
them with my former opening, I find they
are the self-same words repeated. This is the
more surprising to me, because I employ them
in quite a new connexion. For indeed I
declare that my intention was to discard the
commencement I first had in my thoughts, and
to give the preference to another of an entirely
different nature, dating my explanation from an
anterior period of my life. I will make a third
trial, without erasing this second failure,
protesting that it is not my design to conceal any
of my infirmities, whether they be of head or
heart.

              THIRD CHAPTER.

Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to
pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The
natural manner after all, for God knows that is
how it came upon me!

My parents were in a miserable condition of
life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston.
I recollect the sound of Father's Lancashire
clogs on the street pavement above, as being
different in my young hearing from the sound of
all other clogs; and I recollect that when
Mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a
good or an ill tempered look—on her knees—
on her waist—until finally her face came into
view and settled the question. From this it
will be seen that I was timid, and that the
cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway
was very low.

Mother had the gripe and clutch of Poverty
upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of
all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched
words were squeezed out of her, as by the
compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag, and
she had a way of rolling her eyes about and
about the cellar, as she scolded, that was
gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders
rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool,
looking at the empty grate, until she would
pluck the stool from under him, and bid him
go bring some money home. Then he would
dismally ascend the steps, and I, holding my
ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand
(my only braces), would feint and dodge from
Mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.

A worldly little devil was Mother's usual
name for me. Whether I cried for that I was in
the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I
was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into
a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate
voraciously when there was food, she would
still say: "O you worldly little devil!" And
the sting of it was, that I quite well knew
myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to
wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as
to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed
with which I inwardly compared how much
I got of those good things with how much
Father and Mother got, when, rarely, those good
things were going.

Sometimes they both went away seeking
work, and then I would be locked up in the
cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up
to a worldly yearning for enough of anything
(except misery), and for the death of Mother's father,