said Gray Brother. Mowgli was going to answer when a girl in a white cloth came down some path that led from the outskirts of the village.

Gray Brother dropped out of sight at once, and Mowgli backed noiselessly into a field of high-springing crops. He could almost have touched her with his hand when the warm, green stalks closed before his face and he disappeared like a ghost. The girl screamed, for she thought she had seen a spirit, and then she gave a deep sigh. Mowgli parted the stalks with his hands and watched her till she was out of sight.

“And now I do not know,” he said, sighing in his turn. “WHY did ye not come when I called?”

“We follow thee — we follow thee,” Gray Brother mumbled, licking at Mowgli’s heel.