"Anything," said the Mugger, shutting his left eye again--"_anything_ is possible that comes out of a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut. My village is not a small one." There was a whistle overhead on the bridge, and the Delhi Mail slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully following along the river. It clanked away into the dark again; but the Mugger and the Jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. "Is that anything less wonderful than a boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut?" said the bird, looking up. "I saw that built, child. Stone by stone I saw the bridge-piers rise, and when the men fell off (they were wondrous sure-footed for the most part--but _when_ they fell) I was ready. After the first pier was made they never thought to look down the stream for the body to burn. There, again, I saved much trouble. There was nothing strange in the building of the bridge," said the Mugger. "But that which goes across, pulling the roofed carts! That is strange," the Adjutant repeated. "It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. Some day it will not be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old Mugger will then be ready." The Jackal looked at the Adjutant, and the Adjutant looked at the Jackal. If there was one thing they were more certain of than another, it was that the engine was everything in the wide world except a bullock. The Jackal had watched it time and again from the aloe-hedges by the side of the line, and the Adjutant had seen engines since the first locomotive ran in India. But the Mugger had only looked up at the thing from below, where the brass dome seemed rather like a bullock's hump. "M--yes, a new kind of bullock," the Mugger repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure in his own mind; and "Certainly it is a bullock," said the Jackal. "And again it might be--" began the Mugger pettishly. "Certainly--most certainly," said the Jackal, without waiting for the other to finish. "What?" said the Mugger angrily, for he could feel that the others knew more than he did. "What might it be? _I_ never finished my words. You said it was a bullock." "It is anything the Protector of the Poor pleases. I am _his_ servant--not the servant of the thing that crosses the river." "Whatever it is, it is white-face work," said the Adjutant; "and for my own part, I would not lie out upon a place so near to it as this bar."