“It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I could have done no less,” and Rann circled up again to his roost.

“He has not forgotten to use his tongue,” said Baloo, with a chuckle of pride. “To think of one so young remembering the Master Word for the birds while he was being pulled across trees!”

“It was most firmly driven into him,” said Bagheera. “But I am proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs.”

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle People ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting-tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except in times of drouth, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.