One day a very poor man, a fakír, said to him, "How did you manage to become so rich? In old days you were so poor you could hardly support your family."
"I will tell you," said Hím. And he told him all about his visits to the tigers' jungle. "But don't you go there for gold to-night," continued the barber. "Let me go and listen to the tigers talking. If you like, you can come with me. Only you must not be frightened if the tigers roar."
"I'll not be frightened," said the fakír.
So that evening at eight o'clock they went to the tigers' jungle. There the barber and the fakír climbed into a tall thick tree, and its leaves came all about them and sheltered them as if they were in a house. The tigers used to hold their councils under this tree. Very soon all the tigers in the jungle assembled together under it, and their Rájá--a great, huge beast, with only one eye--came too. "Brothers," said the tiger who had given the barber the rupees and jewels, "a man has come here twice to catch twenty of us for the Mahárájá Káns; now we are only four hundred in number, 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 fakír 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.