for ever,' said Bagheera.

Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that comes to every
leader of every pack when his strength goes from him and he gets
feebler and feebler, till at last he is killed by the wolves and a
new leader comes up--to be killed in his turn.

'Take him away,' he said to Father Wolf, 'and train him as befits one
of the Free People.'

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee wolf-pack for the
price of a bull and on Baloo's good word.

* * * * *

Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole years, and only
guess at all the wonderful life Mowgli led among the wolves, because
if it were written out it would fill ever so many books. He grew up
with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost
before he was a child, and Father Wolf taught him his business, and
the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in the grass,
every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above his
head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a
tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool, meant
just as much to him as the work of his office means to a business
man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and
ate and went to sleep again; when he felt dirty or hot he swam in the
forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and
nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it,
and that Bagheera showed him how to do. Bagheera would lie out on a