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282 sidies,—literally quarreling with their own bread and butter, or, what is more vital, with their own powder and shot. Loot, ambush, and murder, rick-burning and cattle-poisoning are daily or nightly amusements of these fire-worshipers turned fire-eaters, who have waylaid, harried, and hung on the rear of every body of troops that ever entered this defile—even turning Alexander the Great away from the Khyber, so that Bucephalus was forced to pick his steps to northward and eastward and bear his master down through the Michni Pass to the Peshawar plain. They have always lived by pillage and blackmail, taking a subsidy to guard and protect the British transport trains in the last Afghan war, and then plundering the baggage and commissariat trains every night, cutting off and sniping every straggler and deserter with as much zeal as they had shown in robbing Shere Ali's train. The stealing of arms and ammunition goes on all along the Peshawar border, neither Sepoys nor English soldiers proving any match for these accomplished thieves, descended from generations of freebooters and plunderers, dedicated to the craft by regular ceremonies at birth, and holding skill in that line as their greatest pride and boast. They have stolen the carbines of European guards sleeping on those arms in the guard-house, taking even the sword of the sentry as he rested it against the wall beside him; and they maintain a steady freemasonry of communication with the British troops through spies and confederates in the native regiments and deserters returned to their tribes. Any saint or