y trail--they shall not follow more.
These were my companions. Pity 'twas they died!
(For Chil! Look you, for Chil!)
Now come I to comfort them that knew them in their pride.
(Chil! Vanguards of Chil!)
Tattered flank and sunken eye, open mouth and red,
Locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead.
Here's an end of every trail--and here my hosts are fed.

THE SPRING RUNNING

Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle!
He that was our Brother goes away.
Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,--
Answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay?

Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle:
He that was our Brother sorrows sore!
Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!)
To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more.

The second year after the great fight with Red Dog and the death of
Akela, Mowgli must have been nearly seventeen years old. He looked
older, for hard exercise, the best of good eating, and baths whenever
he felt in the least hot or dusty, had given him strength and growth far
beyond his age. He could swing by one hand from a top branch for half
an hour at a time, when he had occasion to look along the tree-roads.
He could stop a young buck in mid-gallop and throw him sideways by the
head. He could even jerk over the big, blue wild boars that lived in
the Marshes of the North. The Jungle People who used to fear him for his
wits feared him now for his strength, and when he moved quietly on his
own affairs the mere whisper of his coming cleared the wood-paths. And
yet the look in his eyes was always gentle. Even when he fought, his
eyes never blazed as Bagheera's did. They only grew more and more
interested and excited; and that was one of the things that Bagheera
himself did not understand.

He asked Mowgli about it, and the boy laughed and said. "When I miss the
kill I am angry. When I must go empty for two days I am very angry. Do
not my eyes talk then?"

"The mouth is hungry," said Bagheera, "but the eyes say nothing.
Hunting, eating, or swimming, it is all one--like a stone in wet or dry
weather." Mowgli looked at him lazily from under his long eyelashes,
and, as usual, the panther's head dropped. Bagheera knew his master.

They were lying out far up the side of a hill overlooking the Waingunga,
and the morning mists hung below them in bands of white and green.