“Yes, I know,” Hathi answered; and, after a little silence, “Hast thou drunk thy fill?” “For to-night, yes.” “Go, then. The river is to drink, and not to defile. None but the Lame Tiger would so have boasted of his right at this season when--when we suffer together--Man and Jungle People alike. Clean or unclean, get to thy lair, Shere Khan!” The last words rang out like silver trumpets, and Hathi’s three sons rolled forward half a pace, though there was no need. Shere Khan slunk away, not daring to growl, for he knew--what every one else knows--that when the last comes to the last, Hathi is the Master of the Jungle. “What is this right Shere Khan speaks of?” Mowgli whispered in Bagheera’s ear. “To kill Man is always, shameful. The Law says so. And yet Hathi says----” “Ask him. I do not know, Little Brother. Right or no right, if Hathi had not spoken I would have taught that lame butcher his lesson. To come to the Peace Rock fresh from a kill of Man--and to boast of it--is a jackal’s trick. Besides, he tainted the good water.” Mowgli waited for a minute to pick up his courage, because no one cared to address Hathi directly, and then he cried: “What is Shere Khan’s right, O Hathi?” Both banks echoed his words, for all the People of the Jungle are intensely curious, and they had just seen something that none except Baloo, who looked very thoughtful, seemed to understand. “It is an old tale,” said Hathi; “a tale older than the Jungle. Keep silence along the banks and I will tell that tale.” There was a minute or two of pushing a shouldering among the pigs and the buffalo, and then the leaders of the herds grunted, one after another, “We wait,” and Hathi strode forward, till he was nearly knee-deep in the pool by the Peace Rock. Lean and wrinkled and yellow-tusked though he was, he looked what the Jungle knew him to be--their master. “Ye know, children,” he began, “that of all things ye most fear Man;” and there was a mutter of agreement. “This tale touches thee, Little Brother,” said Bagheera to Mowgli. “I? I am of the Pack--a hunter of the Free People,” Mowgli answered. “What have I to do with Man?” “And ye do not know why ye fear Man?” Hathi went on. “This is the reason. In the beginning of the Jungle, and none know when that was, we of the Jungle walked together, having no fear of one another. In those days there was no drought, and leaves and flowers and fruit grew on the same tree, and we ate nothing at all except leaves and flowers and grass and fruit and bark.” “I am glad I was not born in those days,” said Bagheera. “Bark is only good to sharpen claws.”