charge of the herds saw Mowgli they shouted and ran away, and the yellow
pariah dogs that hang about every Indian village barked. Mowgli walked
on, for he was feeling hungry, and when he came to the village gate he
saw the big thorn-bush that was drawn up before the gate at twilight,
pushed to one side.
Umph! he said, for he had come across more than one such barricade in
his night rambles after things to eat. So men are afraid of the People
of the Jungle here also. He sat down by the gate, and when a man came
out he stood up, opened his mouth, and pointed down it to show that
he wanted food. The man stared, and ran back up the one street of the
village shouting for the priest, who was a big, fat man dressed in
white, with a red and yellow mark on his forehead. The priest came to
the gate, and with him at least a hundred people, who stared and talked
and shouted and pointed at Mowgli.
They have no manners, these Men Folk, said Mowgli to himself. Only
the gray ape would behave as they do. So he threw back his long hair
and frowned at the crowd.
What is there to be afraid of? said the priest. Look at the marks on
his arms and legs. They are the bites of wolves. He is but a wolf-child
run away from the jungle.
Of course, in playing together, the cubs had often nipped Mowgli harder
than they intended, and there were white scars all over his arms and
legs. But he would have been the last person in the world to call these
bites, for he knew what real biting meant.
Arre! Arre! said two or three women together. To be bitten by wolves,
poor child! He is a handsome boy. He has eyes like red fire. By my
honor, Messua, he is not unlike thy boy that was taken by the tiger.
Let me look, said a woman with heavy copper rings on her wrists and
ankles, and she peered at Mowgli under the palm of her hand. Indeed he
is not. He is thinner, but he has the very look of my boy.
The priest was a clever man, and he knew that Messua was wife to the
richest villager in the place. So he looked up at the sky for a minute
and said solemnly: What the jungle has taken the jungle has restored.
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