But the main reason of his popularity was his sympathy,
the real interest which he showed in their cases, and the patience
with which he listened to their stories.
Bathurst himself, as he rode homewards, was still thinking of the
case. Of course there had been lying on both sides; but to that
he was accustomed. It was a question of importance--of greater
importance, no doubt, to the villagers than to their opponent, but
still important to him--for this tract of land was a valuable
one, and of considerable extent, and there was really nothing in the
documents produced on either side to show which ditch was intended
by the original grants. Evidently, at the time they were made, very
many years before, one ditch or the other was not in existence; but
there was no proof as to which was the more recent, although both
sides professed that all traditions handed down to them asserted
the ditch on their side to be the more recent.
He was riding along the road through the great jungle, at his horse's
own pace, which happened for the moment to be a gentle trot, when
a piercing cry rang through the air a hundred yards ahead. Bathurst
started from his reverie, and spurred his horse sharply; the animal
dashed forward at a gallop. At a turn in the road he saw, twenty
yards ahead of him, a tiger, standing with a foot upon a prostrate
figure, while a man in front of it was gesticulating wildly. The
tiger stood as if hesitating whether to strike down the figure in
front or to content itself with that already in its power.
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