he
discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would be
forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun. At other
times he would pick the long thorns out of the pads of his friends,
for wolves suffer terribly from thorns and burs in their coats. He
would go down the hillside into the cultivated lands by night, and
look very curiously at the villagers in their huts, but he had a
mistrust of men because Bagheera showed him a square box with a
drop-gate so cunningly hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked
into it, and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than
anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the
forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how
Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and left as he felt
hungry, and so did Mowgli--with one exception. As soon as he was old
enough to understand things, Bagheera told him that he must never
touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price
of a bull's life. 'All the jungle is thine,' said Bagheera, 'and thou
canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for
the sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any
cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.' Mowgli obeyed
faithfully.

And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that
he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think
of except things to eat.

Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was not a creature
to be trusted, and that some day he must kill Shere Khan; but though
a young wolf would have remembered that advice every hour, Mowgli
forgot it because he was only a boy--though he would have called
himself a wolf if he had been able to speak in any human tongue.

Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle, for as Akela
grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come to be great friends
with the younger wolves of the Pack, who followed him for scraps, a
thing Akela would never have allowed if he had dared to push his
authority to the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them
and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a
dying wolf and a man's cub. 'They tell me,' Shere Khan would say,
'that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes'; and the
young wolves would growl and bristle.

Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew something of this,
and once or twice he told Mowg