the crops?"

"Ay, but again?"

"Have I not followed thee to-night?"

"Ay, but again and again, and it may be again, Gray Brother?"

Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he growled to himself, "The Black
One spoke truth."

"And he said?"

"Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our mother, said----"

"So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog," Mowgli muttered.

"So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all."

"What dost thou say, Gray Brother?"

"They cast thee out once, with bad talk. They cut thy mouth with stones.
They sent Buldeo to slay thee. They would have thrown thee into the Red
Flower. Thou, and not I, hast said that they are evil and senseless.
Thou, and not I--I follow my own people--didst let in the Jungle upon
them. Thou, and not I, didst make song against them more bitter even
than our song against Red Dog."

"I ask thee what THOU sayest?"

They were talking as they ran. Gray Brother cantered on a while
without replying, and then he said,--between bound and bound as it
were,--"Man-cub--Master of the Jungle--Son of Raksha, Lair-brother to
me--though I forget for a little while in the spring, thy trail is my
trail, thy lair is my lair, thy kill is my kill, and thy death-fight
is my death-fight. I speak for the Three. But what wilt thou say to the
Jungle?"

"That is well thought. Between the sight and the kill it is not good to
wait. Go before and cry them all to the Council Rock, and I will tell
them what is in my stomach. But they may not come--in the Time of New
Talk they may forget me."

"Hast thou, then, forgotten nothing?" snapped Gray Brother over his
shoulder, as he laid himself down to gallop, and Mowgli followed,
thinking.

At any other season the news would have called all the Jungle together
with bristling necks, but now they were busy hunting and fighting and
killing and singing. From one to another Gray Brother ran, crying, "The
Master of the Jungle goes back to Man! Come to the Council Rock." And
the happy, eager People only answered, "He will return in the summer
heats. The Rains will drive him to lair. Run and sing with us, Gray
Brother."

"But the Master of the Jungle goes back to Man," Gray Brother would
repeat.

"Eee--Yoawa? Is the Time of New Talk any less sweet for that?" they
would reply. So when Mowgli, heavy-hearted, came up through the
well-remembered rocks to the place where he had been brought into the
Council, he found only the Four, Baloo, who was nearly