Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!'

'Shall I tell him of your gratitude?' said Tabaqui.

'Out!' snapped Father Wolf. 'Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast
done harm enough for one night.'

'I go,' said Tabaqui, quietly. 'Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the
thickets. I might have saved myself the message.'

Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a
little river, he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a
tiger who has caught nothing and does not care if all the jungle
knows it.

'The fool!' said Father Wolf. 'To begin a night's work with that
noise. Does he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga
bullocks?'

'H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,' said Mother
Wolf. 'It is Man.' The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr
that seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was the
noise that bewilders woodcutters and gipsies sleeping in the open,
and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.

'Man!' said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. 'Faugh! Are
there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks that he must eat Man,
and on our ground too!'

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason,