ad died some years ago. "And I know that this is
true," he said, "because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he
got in a riot when his account books were burned, and the tiger that I
speak of he limps, too, for the tracks of his pads are unequal."

"True, true, that must be the truth," said the gray-beards, nodding
together.

"Are all these tales such cobwebs and moon talk?" said Mowgli. "That
tiger limps because he was born lame, as everyone knows. To talk of the
soul of a money-lender in a beast that never had the courage of a jackal
is child's talk."

Buldeo was speechless with surprise for a moment, and the head-man
stared.

"Oho! It is the jungle brat, is it?" said Buldeo. "If thou art so
wise, better bring his hide to Khanhiwara, for the Government has set
a hundred rupees on his life. Better still, talk not when thy elders
speak."

Mowgli rose to go. "All the evening I have lain here listening," he
called back over his shoulder, "and, except once or twice, Buldeo has
not said one word of truth concerning the jungle, which is at his very
doors. How, then, shall I believe the tales of ghosts and gods and
goblins which he says he has seen?"

"It is full time that boy went to herding," said the head-man, while
Buldeo puffed and snorted at Mowgli's impertinence.

The custom of most Indian villages is for a few boys to take the cattle
and buffaloes out to graze in the early morning, and bring them back
at night. The very cattle that would trample a white man to death allow
themselves to be banged and bullied and shouted at by children that
hardly come up to their noses. So long as the boys keep with the herds
they are safe, for not even the tiger will charge a mob of cattle. But
if they straggle to pick flowers or hunt lizards, they are sometimes
carried off. Mowgli went through the village street in the dawn, sitting
on the back of Rama, the great herd bull. The slaty-blue buffaloes,
with their long, backward-sweeping horns and savage eyes, rose out their
byres, one by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to
the children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes with
a long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the
cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be
very careful not to stray away from the herd.

An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little
ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappe