Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/69

 and so running and falling, and rising to run and fall again, she made her way to her father's house, there to tell the tale of her appalling experience.

The story of what had occurred was speedily noised abroad through the villages, and was duly reported to the nearest white man, who heard it with the white man's usual scepticism; while the parents of marriageable daughters, who had been mortified by Haji Ali's choice of a wife, hastened to assure Patîmah's papa and mamma that they had always anticipated something of the sort.

A really remarkable fact, however, was that Haji Ali made no attempt to regain possession of his wife; and this acquires a special significance owing to the extraordinary tenacity which characterizes all Sumatra Malays in relation to their rights in property. His neighbours drew a natural inference from his inaction, and shunned him so sedulously that thenceforth he and his sons were compelled to live in almost complete isolation.

But the drama of the were-tiger of Slim was to have a final act.

One night a fine young water-buffalo, the property of the Headman, Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh, was killed by a tiger, and its owner, saying no word to any man, constructed a cunningly arranged spring-gun over the carcase. The trigger-lines were so set that if the tiger returned to finish his meal—which, after the manner of his kind, he had begun by tearing a