Father Wolf said "He is a fool! Beginning a night's work with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat Waingunga bullocks?"

"Hush. He's not hunting bullocks or buck to-night," said Mother Wolf. "It is Man."

The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every direction at once. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping out of their houses, and sometimes makes them run right into the mouth of the tiger.

"Man!" said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth. " Aren't there enough beetles and frogs in the river? Must he eat Man, and near our home too?" The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill. And then he must hunt far away from where he usually hunts. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of other men with gongs and fireworks and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers.