But the work was practically done. When the villagers looked in
the morning they saw their crops were lost. And that meant death
if they did not get away, for they lived year in and year out as
near to starvation as the Jungle was near to them. When the
buffaloes were sent to graze the hungry brutes found that the
deer had cleared the grazing-grounds, and so wandered into the
Jungle and drifted off with their wild mates; and when twilight
fell the three or four ponies that belonged to the village lay
in their stables with their heads beaten in. Only Bagheera could
have given those strokes, and only Bagheera would have thought of
insolently dragging the last carcass to the open street.

The villagers had no heart to make fires in the fields that
night, so Hathi and his three sons went gleaning among what was
left; and where Hathi gleans there is no need to follow. The men
decided to live on their stored seed-corn until the rains had
fallen, and then to take work as servants till they could catch
up with the lost year; but as the grain-dealer was thinking of
his well-filled crates of corn, and the prices he would levy at
the sale of it, Hathi's sharp tusks were picking out the corner
of his mud-house, and smashing open the big wicker chest, leeped
with cow-dung, where the precious stuff lay.

When that last loss was discovered, it was the Brahmin's turn to
speak. He had prayed to his own Gods without answer. It might
be, he said, that, unconsciously, the village had offended some
one of the Gods of the Jungle, for, beyond doubt, the Jungle was
against them. So they sent for the head-man of the nearest tribe
of wandering Gonds--little, wise, and very black hunters, living
in the deep Jungle, whose fathers came of the oldest race in