It was seven o'clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest. He scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four noisy cubs. The moon shone into the the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to jump up and run down the hill when a little shadow with a large, hairy tail came into the cave and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth for your noble children, I hope that they may never forget the hungry creatures in this world."

It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about causing trouble, and gossiping about what others were doing, and eating bits of cloth and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, can go mad. Then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad. Madness is the worst thing that can happen to a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee - the madness - and they run away from creatures that have it.