This leopard was, without an effort, catholic in its tastes,
especially when hungry. It seldom ate mere venison, or touched the
dogs which common leopards love, but nothing human ever came amiss. It
never heeded caste. It ate woodmen. It ate policemen. It ate the
village artisans, especially leather workers, caught outside the
villages. It ate a holy hermit, and was fond of priests. It ate
postmen. It ate pilgrims. The pilgrims crowded into bigger parties on
its account, and kindled fires at night, and took turns of watching.
More than once the leopard came upon the pilgrim sentry, not very
wide-awake, and killed him suddenly. The rest were safe for that
night, but did not sleep much. A solitary ploughman in a field, as he
turned his cattle at the corner, was seized from behind, and had rest
from his toil. It seldom happened that even the bones were found. The
leopard did not eat the bones, but there were other beasts of many
kinds and sizes to finish what was left.
The total of its "kills" came in the end to about three hundred, more
or less, spread over a "considerable time" as these things go, that is
to say, a year or two, more than a year, "a good deal more than a
year," it was said. In the long-drawn life of a man, who is very long
lived for a beast, it can very seldom have happened, if ever it did
happen, that any man, with all the helps of mechanism, has killed so
many leopards.