ve dared to spring if he had been loose. WOU!"

Mowgli laughed. "Yes, we be great hunters now," said he. "I am very
bold--to eat grubs," and the two came down together through the
crackling undergrowth to the river-bank and the lace-work of shoals that
ran out from it in every direction.

"The water cannot live long," said Baloo, joining them. "Look across.
Yonder are trails like the roads of Man."

On the level plain of the farther bank the stiff jungle-grass had died
standing, and, dying, had mummied. The beaten tracks of the deer and
the pig, all heading toward the river, had striped that colourless plain
with dusty gullies driven through the ten-foot grass, and, early as it
was, each long avenue was full of first-comers hastening to the water.
You could hear the does and fawns coughing in the snuff-like dust.

Up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool round the Peace Rock, and
Warden of the Water Truce, stood Hathi, the wild elephant, with his
sons, gaunt and gray in the moonlight, rocking to and fro--always
rocking. Below him a little were the vanguard of the deer; below these,
again, the pig and the wild buffalo; and on the opposite bank, where the
tall trees came down to the water's edge, was the place set apart for
the Eaters of Flesh--the tiger, the wolves, the panther, the bear, and
the others.

"We are under one Law, indeed," said Bagheera, wading into the water and
looking across at the lines of clicking horns and starting eyes where
the deer and the pig pushed each other to and fro. "Good hunting, all
you of my blood," he added, lying own at full length, one flank thrust
out of the shallows; and then, between his teeth, "But for that which is
the Law it would be VERY good hunting."

The quick-spread ears of the deer caught the last sentence, and a
frightened whisper ran along the ranks. "The Truce! Remember the Truce!"

"Peace there, peace!" gurgled Hathi, the wild elephant. "The Truce
holds, Bagheera. This is no time to talk of hunting."

"Who should know better than I?" Bagheera answered, rolling his yellow
eyes up-stream. "I am an eater of turtles--a fisher of frogs. Ngaayah!
Would I could get good from chewing branches!"

"WE wish so, very greatly," bleated a young fawn, who had only been born
that spring, and did not at all like it. Wretched as the Jungle People
were, even Hathi could not help chuckling; while Mowgli, lying on his
elbows in the warm water, laughed aloud, and beat up the scum