was just what Bahram Khan had been counting upon, and they found that their quarters for the night were in the stables belonging to the court-house, where all their new comrades slept. There were sentries in the yard in front, which looked as if something was expected to happen. Anstruther and Sultan Jān had one of the stalls to themselves, and as soon as ever the rest seemed to be asleep, they set to work to dig through the wall with their daggers, one working, and the other lying so as to screen him from the sentry, or any one else who might look in. Just before they broke through, it struck them to ask one another what was on the other side. They knew there was a lane at the back of the stables, but would they come out into the full moonlight or the shadow, and was there another sentry there? After listening carefully, they settled that there, wasn’t a sentry, but they couldn’t decide upon the moonlight, so they had to chance it. While Sultan Jān dug away the mud bricks, Anstruther was heaping up the straw they had been lying upon to hide the hole, and arranging their _poshteens_ [sheepskin-lined coats] to look as if they were still there. Happily, when they got through, they were on the dark side of the lane. They crept out, and built up the hole again as well as they could from the outside. It was awfully nervous work, for a patrol might come along at any minute, but at last they were able to be off. They wriggled along in the shadow, and Sultan Jān led the way towards the east side of the town. Of course it was a fearful round, but they couldn’t risk passing the enemy’s headquarters again. The moon bothered them horribly, for they knew that until it set there was no hope of passing the outpost at the old godowns on the bank, even if they got to the canal safely. They reached the desert all right through the by-lanes, and made tracks for the point at which they had landed two nights before, but to get to it they had to pass the house of one of the Hindu canal-officials, who seems to have been left in possession in return for doing some sort of dirty work for Bahram Khan. There was a dog which made a row, and the Hindu came out and caught them. Sultan Jān wanted to kill him, but Anstruther wouldn’t hear of it, so they asked for a night’s lodging in one of the outbuildings, intending, of course, to slip away as soon as he was gone to bed again. But he insisted on bringing out food, and sat up talking to them, while they were agonising to get rid of him. And all the time he must have sent some one to the town to give the alarm, for suddenly he changed countenance and got confused as he talked, and they looked at the door, and there were Bahram Khan’s men. In a moment they were in the thick of a tremendous rough-and-tumble fight. There was no room inside the hut to use rifles, but both sides had daggers, and the enemy tulwars. Anstruther says he fought mostly with his fists, and the enemy seemed to think that wasn’t fair, for pretty soon