gave an order to the trees that hang
low, and to the trailing creepers of the Jungle, that they should mark
the killer of the buck so that he should know him again, and he said,
'Who will now be master of the Jungle People?' Then up leaped the Gray
Ape who lives in the branches, and said, 'I will now be master of the
Jungle.'"

At this Tha laughed, and said, "So be it," and went away very angry.

"Children, ye know the Gray Ape. He was then as he is now. At the first
he made a wise face for himself, but in a little while he began to
scratch and to leap up and down, and when Tha came back he found the
Gray Ape hanging, head down, from a bough, mocking those who stood
below; and they mocked him again. And so there was no Law in the
Jungle--only foolish talk and senseless words.

"Then Tha called us all together and said: 'The first of your masters
has brought Death into the Jungle, and the second Shame. Now it is time
there was a Law, and a Law that ye must not break. Now ye shall know
Fear, and when ye have found him ye shall know that he is your master,
and the rest shall follow.' Then we of the jungle said, 'What is Fear?'
And Tha said, 'Seek till ye find.' So we went up and down the Jungle
seeking for Fear, and presently the buffaloes----"

"Ugh!" said Mysa, the leader of the buffaloes, from their sand-bank.

"Yes, Mysa, it was the buffaloes. They came back with the news that in a
cave in the Jungle sat Fear, and that he had no hair, and went upon his
hind legs. Then we of the Jungle followed the herd till we came to that
cave, and Fear stood at the mouth of it, and he was, as the buffaloes
had said, hairless, and he walked upon his hinder legs. When he saw us
he cried out, and his voice filled us with the fear that we have now of
that voice when we hear it, and we ran away, tramping upon and tearing
each other because we were afraid. That night, so it was told to me, we
of the Jungle did not lie down together as used to be our custom, but
each tribe drew off by itself--the pig with the pig, the deer with the
deer; horn to horn, hoof to hoof,--like keeping to like, and so lay
shaking in the Jungle.

"Only the First of the Tigers was not with us, for he was still hidden
in the marshes of the North, and when word was brought to him of the
Thing we had seen in the cave, he said. 'I will go to this Thing and
break his neck.' So he ran all the night till he came to the cave; but
the trees and the creepers on his pat