They looked around and saw spots of fresh blood on the ground. The woman rushed into the bushes in great alarm, following the trail of bloodstains. In a few minutes, they were startled by the roaring of a tiger. The woman rushed towards it holding her torch aloft, and found a big tiger sitting on a rock eating a dead man. It was her husband! She rushed at it and thrust her blazing torch in its face. Frightened by the fire it ran away, dragging the body with it. She pursued it vigorously having no intention of letting it take her husband’s body from her. In the end it dropped the body and sat a little way off, licking its lips.

 

The woman handed her torch to Gim, and embraced the bleeding body of her husband. It was already cold and stiff. She turned to go home, carrying the body on her back, and asked Gim to follow her with the two torches. When they got back she put the body in a storeroom, and invited Gim to rest in the house. He had never experienced such a dreadful adventure, and was almost fainting in his fear. He lay down in the room, still trembling and gasping. After a short time he heard a roar, and then a loud crash echoed in the stillness of the night. Then the woman shouted, ‘I have killed the tiger! Come out and see.’

 

A great yellow tiger lay at the entrance of the storeroom with its throat cut, and the woman stood beside it with an axe in her hand. She told him how she had killed it, ‘I was sure it would come down to the house to look for its prey, and sure enough it came. It smelt blood and came to the storeroom. I was hiding behind the door, and I killed it with this axe.’ With these words, she hacked the tiger to pieces, that she might savor her revenge to the full. Then she went on, ‘This is the notorious White-eared Tiger. You can see its white ears, can’t you? The villagers have been trying to catch it for years, and now I have killed it.’

 

Gim asked her to tell him about it. So she told him its history. ‘Some years ago the villagers down the hill gathered outdoors in the cool of a summer evening. One man went away for a moment and did not come back. So they all went to look for him, and found him lying grievously hurt in a cornfield. He died almost at once and they buried him. A few days later, they found the dead man standing by a tree near the grave. When they touched him, he fell to the ground. The tiger had dug the body up and had leant it against the tree. Then the villagers saw a big tiger with white ears squatting on a nearby rock. One of the village elders then said that when the white-eared tiger was deprived of its prey it would come back to play with it. He therefore advised them to throw it a coat belonging to the dead man. So they threw it one, and it took it in its forepaws and ran happily away. That tiger was yellowish brown in color and had white ears. It is the very tiger we caught to-night, isn’t it?’