A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages. Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who looked like a lawyer's tout. 'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his hand,' said E.23. 'They go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk netting a pool.' When the procession reached their compartment, E.23 was counting his beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up his belongings. 'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the Englishman aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean extortion to the native all India over. 'The trouble now,' whispered E.23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the tar-office in this guise.' 'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?' 'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!' This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police,--belt, helmet, polished spurs and all,--strutting and twirling his dark moustache. 'What fools are these Police Sahibs!' said Kim genially. E.23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in a changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep my place.' He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-worded in clumsy Urdu. 'Tum-mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station belonged to you, my friend.' E.23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded him of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible time of his first schooling. 'My good fool,' the Englishman drawled. 'Nickle-jao! Go back to your carriage.' Step by step, withdrawing deferentially, and dropping his voice, the yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D. S. P. to remotest posterity by--here Kim almost jumped--by the curse of the Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an assortment of Gods with wholly new names. 'I don't know what you're saying,'--the Englishman flushed angrily,--'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!' E.23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand. 'Oh zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner. 'All for the sake of a jest too.' He had been grinning at the freedom of the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well to-day, Holy One!'