father's father came from the egg, and it shall endure when my
son's sons are as white as I! Salomdhi, son of Chandrabija,
son of Viyeja, son of Yegasuri, made it in the days of Bappa
Rawal. Whose cattle are YE?"

"It is a lost trail," said Mowgli, turning to Kaa. "I know not
his talk."

"Nor I. He is very old. Father of Cobras, there is only the
Jungle here, as it has been since the beginning."

"Then who is HE," said the White Cobra, "sitting down before
me, unafraid, knowing not the name of the King, talking our
talk through a man's lips? Who is he with the knife and the
snake's tongue?"

"Mowgli they call me," was the answer. "I am of the Jungle.
The wolves are my people, and Kaa here is my brother. Father
of Cobras, who art thou?"

"I am the Warden of the King's Treasure. Kurrun Raja builded the
stone above me, in the days when my skin was dark, that I might
teach death to those who came to steal. Then they let down the
treasure through the stone, and I heard the song of the Brahmins
my masters."

"Umm!" said Mowgli to himself. "I have dealt with one Brahmin
already, in the Man-Pack, and--I know what I know. Evil comes
here in a little."

"Five times since I came here has the stone been lifted, but
always to let down more, and never to take away. There are no
riches like these riches--the treasures of a hundred kings.
But it is long and long since the stone was last moved, and
I think that my city has forgotten."

"There is no city. Look up. Yonder are roots of the great trees
tearing the stones apart. Trees and men do not grow together,"
Kaa insisted.

"Twice and thrice have men found their way here," the White
Cobra answered savagely; "but they never spoke till I came upon
them groping in the dark, and then they cried only a little
time. But ye come with lies, Man and Snake both, and would have
me believe the city is not, and that my wardship ends. Little do
men change in the years. But I change never! Till the stone is
lifted, and the Brahmins come down singing the songs that
I know, and feed me with warm milk, and take me to the light
again, I--I--_I_, and no other, am the Warden of the King's
Treasure! The city is dead, ye say, and here are the roots of
the trees? Stoop down, then, and take what ye will. Earth has no
treasure like to these. Man with the snake's tongue, if thou
canst go alive by the way that thou hast entered it, the lesser
Kings will be thy servants!"

"Again the trail is lost," said Mowgli coolly. "Can any jackal
have burrowed so deep and bitten this great White Hood? He is
surely mad. Father of Cobras, I see nothing here to take away."

"By the Gods of the Sun and Moon, it is the madness of death
upon the boy!" hissed the Cobra. "Before thine eyes close I will
allow thee this favour. Look thou, and see what man has never
seen before!"

"They do not well in the Jungle who speak to Mowgli of favours,"
said the boy, between his teeth; "but the dark changes all, as I
know. I will look, if that please thee."

He stared with puckered-up eyes round the vault, and then lifted
up from the floor a handful of something that glittered.

"Oho!" said he, "this is like the stuff they play with in the
Man-Pack: only this is yellow and the other was brown."

He let the gold pieces fall, and move forward. The floor of the
vault was buried some five or six feet deep in coined gold and
silver that had burst from the sacks it had been originally
stored in, and, in the long years, the metal had packed and
settled as sand packs at low tide. On it and in it and rising
through it, as wrecks lift through the sand, were jewelled
elephant-howdahs of embossed silver, studded with plates of
hammered gold, and adorned with carbuncles and turquoises.
There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed
and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and
amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with
pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were
studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with
jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel,
and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were
helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there
were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide,
strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the
edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and
hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles,
and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day;
there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners,
combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in
embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands,
finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts,
seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and


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