How A Dead Tiger Killed The Princess

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Title:     How A Dead Tiger Killed The Princess
Author: Katherine Neville Fleeson [More Titles by Fleeson]

There was once a king who had a daughter at whose birth a wise man foretold that she would be killed by a tiger when she was a maiden grown. In order that no animal might approach her, the king built her a house set upon one huge pillar, and there she and her attendants ever dwelt.

And it fell upon a day, when the daughter was well grown, that one of the hunters, whose labor it was to kill the tigers of the country, brought a dead one to the palace of the king. The princess, seeing her dead enemy, came down from her tower and plucked a whisker from the tiger, and, as she blew her breath on it, she cried, "I do not fear thee, O my enemy, for thou art dead!" But the poison, which is in the whiskers of a tiger, entered into the blood of the princess, and she died.

Then did the king make a proclamation, and sent messengers throughout all his realm, commanding that, when a tiger was killed, all his whiskers be immediately pulled out and burned, that a tiger may not be able to slay when dead; and until this day, the people obey the command of the king.

[The end]
Katherine Neville Fleeson's short story: How A Dead Tiger Killed The Princess

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