"Long before, I had found a young panther cub. As it grew it evinced a strange love for me. No dog that ever attached itself to a man could have been more absolutely devoted to him than the panther to me. In proportion as it loved me, so it hated my victims. In all our trampings it followed at my heels. At night I had to fasten it up, or it would have forestalled me.
"Now I began to brood what should be their end.
"I hesitated, and for a time almost wavered. After all, the Begum was a woman, and I could not kill a woman, though both she and the other had entreated me to do so a hundred times, for the fatigue and hunger and sleeplessness I subjected them to had made such a horror of their lives, that, curs as they were, death seemed preferable. Moreover I never ceased to remind them of their hellish deeds, and I embittered their every hour by recalling to them how I had waited for those hours, and of their certain deaths.
"While I hesitated, his master the devil put it into the Nana's head to help me. He saw and divined my hesitation.
"One day he stood before me, gaunt and starving.
"'You cannot kill her,' he said.
"'No,' I replied, 'she is a woman.'
"A hideous sneer made his gaunt jaws horrible.
"'I will kill her if you will let me go.'
"There he was, devil to the last. He trembled with the eagerness of anticipated freedom.