“I put them back, sahib, but why fasten them? There was no man inside, and in case any should seek to enter, the hole should be blocked up from within, not from without. Moreover, if the protector of the poor would invite Winlock Sahib to bring his sporting dog to the house, with your honour’s own dogs we might succeed in killing all the rats before mending the floors.” “Good idea! Ask the memsahib to give you a _chit_ to Winlock Sahib. No; it had better be to-morrow. I shall be out all to-day.” Ismail Bakhsh salaamed and departed, and Dick returned to his dressing, neither of them dreaming that they were separated by nothing but a half-inch plank from a man who had listened to the whole of their colloquy. The bungalow, which had never been intended for a permanent dwelling, had been run up in haste. Hence the contrast of its somewhat ramshackle appearance with that of the substantial stone houses in the cantonments, and hence also the perpetual worry caused by the colonies of rats inhabiting the space under the floors, which should have been filled up with concrete. However, since innumerable complaints and remonstrances had brought nothing but vague promises and an occasional snub from those in authority, Dick and Georgia continued to live on in their unsatisfactory dwelling, and to wage intermittent warfare against the rats. But the rats could not fairly be accused of the worst of the damage of which Ismail Bakhsh complained, for crouched under the boards lay the sweetseller, who had effected an entrance by sliding out one of the planks from the front of the verandah and pulling another aside, returning them to their places when he had crawled in. His dark face paled when Ismail Bakhsh suggested bringing the dogs, but when he heard Dick postpone the rat-hunt to the next day, he breathed freely again. “To-day is all I want,” he said to himself. “When I have once got the paper for Jehanara Bibi from that accursed half-blood my work is done, and Nāth Sahib may set his dogs on my track as much as he likes--and his sowars too.”