villages;
and in those villages, and in their lands, the grazing-ground and the
soft crop-grounds, there is not one man to-day who takes his food from
the ground. That was the Sack of the Fields of Bhurtpore, which I and
my three sons did; and now I ask, Man-cub, how the news of it came to
thee?" said Hathi.

"A man told me, and now I see even Buldeo can speak truth. It was well
done, Hathi with the white mark; but the second time it shall be done
better, for the reason that there is a man to direct. Thou knowest the
village of the Man-Pack that cast me out? They are idle, senseless, and
cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for
food, but for sport. When they are full-fed they would throw their own
breed into the Red Flower. This I have seen. It is not well that they
should live here any more. I hate them!"

"Kill, then," said the youngest of Hathi's three sons, picking up a tuft
of grass, dusting it against his fore-legs, and throwing it away, while
his little red eyes glanced furtively from side to side.

"What good are white bones to me?" Mowgli answered angrily. "Am I the
cub of a wolf to play in the sun with a raw head? I have killed Shere
Khan, and his hide rots on the Council Rock; but--but I do not know
whither Shere Khan is gone, and my stomach is still empty. Now I
will take that which I can see and touch. Let in the Jungle upon that
village, Hathi!"

Bagheera shivered, and cowered down. He could understand, if the worst
came to the worst, a quick rush down the village street, and a right and
left blow into a crowd, or a crafty killing of men as they ploughed in
the twilight; but this scheme for deliberately blotting out an entire
village from the eyes of man and beast frightened him. Now he saw why
Mowgli had sent for Hathi. No one but the long-lived elephant could plan
and carry through such a war.

"Let them run as the men ran from the fields of Bhurtpore, till we have
the rain-water for the only plough, and the noise of the rain on the
thick leaves for the pattering of their spindles--till Bagheera and I
lair in the house of the Brahmin, and the buck drink at the tank behind
the temple! Let in the Jungle, Hathi!"

"But I--but we have no quarrel with them, and it needs the red rage
of great pain ere we tear down the places where men sleep," said Hathi
doubtfully.

"Are ye the only eaters of grass in the Jungle? Drive in your peoples.
Let the deer and the pig and the ni