disputes. In those days the First of the Tigers ate fruit and grass with the others. He was as large as I am, and he was very beautiful, in colour all over like the blossom of the yellow creeper. There was never stripe nor bar upon his hide in those good days when this the Jungle was new.

All the Jungle People came before him without fear, and his word was the Law of all the Jungle. We were then, remember ye, one people.

“Yet upon a night there was a dispute between two bucks — a grazing-quarrel such as ye now settle with the horns and the fore-feet — and it is said that as the two spoke together before the First of the First of the Tigers lying among the flowers, a buck pushed him with his horns, and the First of the Tigers forgot that he was the master and judge of