"Do not--do not bring thy--thy servants with thee," said Messua. "I--we have always lived at peace with the Jungle." "It is peace," said Mowgli, rising. "Think of that night on the road to Kanhiwara. There were scores of such folk before thee and behind thee. But I see that even in springtime the Jungle People do not always forget. Mother, I go." Messua drew aside humbly--he was indeed a wood-god, she thought; but as his hand was on the door the mother in her made her throw her arms round Mowgli's neck again and again. "Come back!" she whispered. "Son or no son, come back, for I love thee--Look, he too grieves." The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going away. "Come back again," Messua repeated. "By night or by day this door is never shut to thee." Mowgli's throat worked as though the cords in it were being pulled, and his voice seemed to be dragged from it as he answered, "I will surely come back." "And now," he said, as he put by the head of the fawning wolf on the threshold, "I have a little cry against thee, Gray Brother. Why came ye not all four when I called so long ago?" "So long ago? It was but last night. I--we--were singing in the Jungle the new songs, for this is the Time of New Talk. Rememberest thou?" "Truly, truly." "And as soon as the songs were sung," Gray Brother went on earnestly, "I followed thy trail. I ran from all the others and followed hot-foot. But, O Little Brother, what hast _thou_ done, eating and sleeping with the Man-Pack?" "If ye had come when I called, this had never been," said Mowgli, running much faster. "And now what is to be?" said Gray Brother. Mowgli was just 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. "We follow thee always, except in the Time of the New Talk." "And would ye follow me to the Man-Pack?" Mowgli whispered. "Did I not follow thee on the night our old Pack cast thee out? Who waked thee lying among the crops?" "Ay, but again?" "Have I not followed thee to-night?" "Ay, but again and again, and it may be again, Gray Brother?" Gray Brother was silent. When he spoke he growled to himself, "The Black One spoke truth." "And he said?" "Man goes to Man at the last. Raksha, our mother, said--" "So also said Akela on the night of Red Dog," Mowgli muttered. "So also says Kaa, who is wiser than us all."