hear the news. On my back, Little Brother."

"This is no time to carry weight. I can still stand alone,
but--indeed we be no fatted bullocks, we two."

Bagheera looked along his ragged, dusty flank and whispered.
"Last night I killed a bullock under the yoke. So low was I
brought that I think I should not have dared to spring if he
had been loose. WOU!"

Mowgli laughed. "Yes, we be great hunters now," said he.
"I am very bold--to eat grubs," and the two came down together
through the crackling undergrowth to the river-bank and the
lace-work of shoals that ran out from it in every direction.

"The water cannot live long," said Baloo, joining them.
"Look across. Yonder are trails like the roads of Man."

On the level plain of the farther bank the stiff jungle-grass
had died standing, and, dying, had mummied. The beaten tracks
of the deer and the pig, all heading toward the river, had
striped that colourless plain with dusty gullies driven through
the ten-foot grass, and, early as it was, each long avenue was
full of first-comers hastening to the water. You could hear the
does and fawns coughing in the snuff-like dust.

Up-stream, at the bend of the sluggish pool round the Peace
Rock, and Warden of the Water Truce, stood Hathi, the wild
elephant, with his sons, gaunt and gray in the moonlight,
rocking to and fro--always rocking. Below him a little were the