he
cages of the King's Palace at Oodeypore. It was because of this that
I paid the price for thee at the Council when thou wast a little
naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the
jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I
felt that I was Bagheera--the Panther--and no man's plaything, and I
broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and
because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the
jungle than Shere Khan. Is it not so?'

'Yes,' said Mowgli;' all the jungle fear Bagheera--all except
Mowgli.'

'Oh, _thou_ art a man's cub,' said the Black Panther, very
tenderly; 'and even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must go back
to men at last,--to the men who are thy brothers,--if thou art not
killed in the Council.'

'But why--but why should any wish to kill me?' said Mowgli.

'Look at me,' said Bagheera; and Mowgli looked at him steadily
between the eyes. The big panther turned his head away in half a
minute.

'_That_ is why,' he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. 'Not even I
can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among men, and I love
thee, Little Brother. The others they hate thee because their eyes
cannot meet thine; because thou art wise; because thou hast pulled
out thorns from their feet--because thou art a man.'

'I did not know these things,' said Mowgli, sullenly; and he frowned
under his heavy black eyebrows.

'What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By
thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It
is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill,--and at each
hunt it costs him more to pin the buck,--the Pack will turn against
him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock,
and then--and then--I have it!' said Bagheera, leaping up. 'Go thou
down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the
Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou
mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the
Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.'

By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle
will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear
of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.

'The Red Flower?' said Mowgli. 'That grows outside their huts in the
twilight. I will get some.'

'There speaks the man's cub,' said Bagheera, proudly. 'Remember that
it grows in lit