where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into the night.  They told wonderful tales of gods and men and ghosts; and Buldeo told even more wonderful ones of the ways of beasts in the jungle, till the eyes of the children sitting outside the circle bulged out of their heads.  Most of the tales were about animals, for the jungle was always at their door.  The deer and the wild pig grubbed up their crops, and now and again the tiger carried off a man at twilight, within sight of the village gates.

Mowgli, who naturally knew something about what they were talking of, had to cover his face not to show that he was laughing, while Buldeo, the Tower musket across his knees, climbed on from one wonderful story to another, and Mowgli’s shoulders shook.

Buldeo was explaining how the tiger that had carried away Messua’s son was a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked, old money-lender, who had 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 graybeards, nodding together.

‘Are all these tales such cobwebs and moontalk?’ said Mowgli.  ’That tiger limps because he was born lame, as every one 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 headman, 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; and 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