ace," said Mowgli, rising. "Think of that night on the road to
Khanhiwara. There were scores of such folk before thee and behind
thee. But I see that even in springtime the Jungle People do not always
forget. Mother, I go."

Messua drew aside humbly--he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but as
his hand was on the door the mother in her made her throw her arms round
Mowgli's neck again and again.

"Come back!" she whispered. "Son or no son, come back, for I love
thee--Look, he too grieves."

The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going
away.

"Come back again," Messua repeated. "By night or by day this door is
never shut to thee."

Mowgli's throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled, and
his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he answered, "I will surely
come back."

"And now," he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the
threshold, "I have a little cry against thee, Gray Brother. Why came ye
not all four when I called so long ago?"

"So long ago? It was but last night. I--we--were singing in the Jungle
the new songs, for this is the Time of New Talk. Rememberest thou?"

"Truly, truly."

"And as soon as the songs were sung," Gray Brother went on earnestly,
"I followed thy trail. I ran from all the others and followed hot-foot.
But, O Little Brother, what hast THOU done, eating and sleeping with the
Man-Pack?"

"If ye had come when I called, this had never been," said Mowgli,
running much faster.

"And now what is to be?" said Gray Brother. Mowgli was going to answer
when a girl in a white cloth came down some path that led from the
outskirts of the village. Gray Brother dropped out of sight at once, and
Mowgli backed noiselessly into a field of high-springing crops. He could
almost have touched her with his hand when the warm, green stalks closed
before his face and he disappeared like a ghost. The girl screamed, for
she thought she had seen a spirit, and then she gave a deep sigh. Mowgli
parted the stalks with his hands and watched her till she was out of
sight.

"And now I do not know," he said, sighing in his turn. "WHY did ye not
come when I called?"

"We follow thee--we follow thee," Gray Brother mumbled, licking at
Mowgli's heel. "We follow thee always, except in the Time of the New
Talk."

"And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack?" Mowgli whispered.

"Did I not follow thee on the night our old Pack cast thee out? Who
waked thee lying among