“No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf Ullah. I have a truck-load up the line. Could anyone take them out without the Railway’s knowledge?” “Shouldn’t think so, Mahbub. You can claim against us if they do.” “I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks nearly all night. _Faquirs_ do not steal horses, so I gave them no more thought. I would find Lutuf Ullah, my partner.” “The deuce you did? And you didn’t bother your head about it? ’Pon my word, it’s just almost as well that I met you. What were they like, eh?” “They were only _faquirs_. They will no more than take a little grain, perhaps, from one of the trucks. There are many up the line. The State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my partner, Lutuf Ullah.” “Never mind your partner. Where are your horse-trucks?” “A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for the trains.”— “The signal-box! Yes.” “And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand side—looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah—a tall man with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound Aie!” The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman; for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard. “They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will wonder why there are no _faquirs_. They are very clever boys—Barton Sahib and Young Sahib.” He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and he caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab. “I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,” said Mahbub Ali. “To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!” When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but one small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man’s service, whom Mahbub called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing. “It is all known to me,” whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags. ’Two Sahibs came up on a _te-train_. I was running to and fro in the dark on this side of the trucks as the _te-train_ moved up and down slowly. They fell upon two men sitting under this truck—Hajji, what shall I do with this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag? Yes—and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib with a _faquir’s_ buck’s horn” (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which are a _faquir’s_ sole temporal weapon)—“the blood came. So the other Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a short gun which had rolled from the first man’s hand. They all raged as though mad together.”