ber, and if twenty of us were taken away we should be only a small number, so I gave him each time as many rupees and jewels as he could carry and he went away again. What shall we do if he returns?" The tigers said they would meet again on the morrow, and then they would settle the matter. Then the tigers went off, and the barber and the fakir came down from the tree. They took a quantity of rupees and jewels and returned to their homes.
"To-morrow," said they, "we will come again and hear what the tigers say."
The next day the barber went alone to the tigers' jungle, and there he met his tiger again. "This time," said he, "I am come to cut off the ears of all the four hundred tigers who live in this jungle; for Mahárájá Káns wants them to make into medicine."
The tiger was greatly frightened, much more so than at the other times. "Don't cut off our ears; pray don't," said he, "for then we could not hear, and it would hurt so horribly. Go and cut off all the dogs' ears instead, and I will give you rupees and jewels as much as two men can carry." "Good," said the barber, and he made two journeys with the rupees and jewels from the jungle to the borders of his village, and there he got a cooly to help him to carry them to his house.
At night he and the fakír went again to the great tree under which the tigers held their councils. Now the tiger who had given the barber so many rupees and jewels had made ready a great quantity of meat, fowls, chickens, geese, men the tigers had killed—everything he had been able to get hold of—and he made them into a heap under the tree, for he said that after the tigers had settled the matter they would dine. Soon the tigers arrived with their Rájá, and the barber's tiger said, "Brothers, what are we to do? This man came again to-day to cut off all our ears to make medicine for Mahárájá Káns.
