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."

"You do not know the English as I do," said the Mugger. "There was a
white-face here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat
in the evenings and shuffle with his feet on the bottom-boards, and
whisper: 'Is he here? Is he there? Bring me my gun.' I could hear him
before I could see him--each sound that he made--creaking and puffing
and rattling his gun, up and down the river. As surely as I had picked
up one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the
burning, so surely would he come down to the Ghaut, and shout in a loud
voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of me--the Mugger of
Mugger-Ghaut! ME! Children, I have swum under the bottom of his boat for
hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at logs; and when I was well
sure he was wearied, I