jog-trot for nearly twenty miles, till he came to a country that he
did not know. The valley opened out into a great plain dotted over with
rocks and cut up by ravines. At one end stood a little village, and at
the other the thick jungle came down in a sweep to the grazing-grounds,
and stopped there as though it had been cut off with a hoe. All over the
plain, cattle and buffaloes were grazing, and when the little boys in
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."