Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may
refuse him the same.

Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her
year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may
deny her the same.

Cave-Right is the right of the Father--to hunt by himself
for his own.
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the
Council alone.

Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe
and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of the Head
Wolf is Law.

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and
mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch
and the hump is--Obey!



THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT

The night we felt the earth would move
We stole and plucked him by the hand,
Because we loved him with the love
That knows but cannot understand.

And when the roaring hillside broke,
And all our world fell down in rain,
We saved him, we the Little Folk;
But lo! he does not come again!

Mourn now, we saved him for the sake
Of such poor love as wild ones may.
Mourn ye! Our brother will not wake,
And his own kind drive us away!

Dirge of the Langurs.


There was once a man in India who was Prime Minister of one of
the semi-independent native States in the north-western part of
the country. He was a Brahmin, so high-caste that caste ceased
to have any particular meaning for him; and his father had been
an important official in the gay-coloured tag-rag and bobtail of
an old-fashioned Hindu Court. But as Purun Dass grew up he felt
that the old order of things was changing, and that if any one
wished to get on in the world he must stand well with the
English, and imitate all that the English believed to be good.
At the same time a native official must keep his own master's
favour. This was a difficult game, but the quiet, close-mouthed
young Brahmin, helped by a good English education at a Bombay
University, played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to be
Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to say, he held more real
power than his master the Maharajah.

When the old king--who was suspicious of the English, their
railways and telegraphs--died, Purun Dass stood high with his
young successor, who had been tutored by an Englishman; and
between them, though he always took care that his master should
have the credit, they established schools for little girls,
made roads, and started State dispensaries and shows of
agricultural implements, and published a yearly blue-book on
the "Moral and Material Progress of the State," and the Foreign
Office and the Government of India were delighted. Very few
native States take up English progress altogether, for they will
not believe, as Purun Dass showed he did, that what was good for
the Englishman must be twice as good for the Asiatic. The Prime
Minister became the honoured friend of Viceroys, and Governors,
and Lieutenant-Governors, and medical missionaries, and common
missionaries, and hard-riding English officers who came to shoot
in the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists
who travelled up and down India in the cold weather, showing how
things ought to be managed. In his spare time he would endow
scholarships for the study of medicine and manufactures on
strictly English lines, and write letters to the "Pioneer",
the greatest Indian daily paper, explaining his master's aims
and objects.

At last he went to England on a visit, and had to pay enormous
sums to the priests when he came back; for even so high-caste a
Brahmin as Purun Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea.
In London he met and talked with every one worth knowing--
men whose names go all over the world--and saw a great deal
more than he said. He was given honorary degrees by learned
universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social
reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all London
cried, "This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at
dinner since cloths were first laid."

When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for
the Viceroy himself made a special visit to confer upon the
Maharajah the Grand Cross of the Star of India--all diamonds
and ribbons and enamel; and at the same ceremony, while the
cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a Knight Commander of the


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