eels, and they cried, "The witch and the
wizard! Let us see if hot coins will make them confess! Burn the hut
over their heads! We will teach them to shelter wolf-devils! Nay, beat
them first! Torches! More torches! Buldeo, heat the gun-barrels!"

Here was some little difficulty with the catch of the door. It had been
very firmly fastened, but the crowd tore it away bodily, and the light
of the torches streamed into the room where, stretched at full length on
the bed, his paws crossed and lightly hung down over one end, black
as the Pit, and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera. There was one
half-minute of desperate silence, as the front ranks of the crowd clawed
and tore their way back from the threshold, and in that minute
Bagheera raised his head and yawned--elaborately, carefully, and
ostentatiously--as he would yawn when he wished to insult an equal.
The fringed lips drew back and up; the red tongue curled; the lower jaw
dropped and dropped till you could see half-way down the hot gullet; and
the gigantic dog-teeth stood clear to the pit of the gums till they rang
together, upper and under, with the snick of steel-faced wards shooting
home round the edges of a safe. Next instant the street was empty;
Bagheera had leaped back through the window, and stood at Mowgli's
side, while a yelling, screaming torrent scrambled and tumbled one over
another in their panic haste to get to their own huts.

"They will not stir till day comes," said Bagheera quietly. "And now?"

The silence of the afternoon sleep seemed to have overtaken the village;
but, as they listened, they could hear the sound of heavy grain-boxes
being dragged over earthen floors and set down against doors. Bagheera
was quite right; the village would not stir till daylight. Mowgli sat
still, and thought, and his face grew darker and darker.

"What have I done?" said Bagheera, at last coming to his feet, fawning.

"Nothing but great good. Watch them now till the day. I sleep." Mowgli
ran off into the Jungle, and dropped like a dead man across a rock, and
slept and slept the day round, and the night back again.

When he waked, Bagheera was at his side, and there was a newly-killed
buck at his feet. Bagheera watched curiously while Mowgli went to work
with his skinning-knife, ate and drank, and turned over with his chin in
his hands.

"The man and the woman are come safe within eye-shot of Khanhiwara,"
Bagheera said. "Thy lair mother sent the word back by Ch