midnight
_ Hukm hai ... sumja _ ? '' -LSB- 2 -RSB- She laughed and shrugged her shoulders . Having won the victory that mattered , she could afford to be submissive over trifles . An hour or so before midnight , they clanked into Lahore station -- a big-bastioned building , whose solid masonry breathed fire , as literally as any dragon of romance . Within was a great darkness , partially dispelled by hanging oil-lamps ; and babel enough to wake the Seven Sleepers . The uninitiated arriving at an Indian railway station are apt to imagine that a riot of some sort must be in progress . But it is only the third-class passenger , whose name is legion , fighting , tooth and nail , for the foot of space due to every possessor of the precious morsel of cardboard tucked into the folds of his belt : because he knows , from harsh experience , that when the train moves on more than a few will be left disconsolate , to watch its unwinking eye vanish out of their ken : -- bewildered adventurers , for many of whom the `` fire-carriage '' still remains a new-fangled god , who feeds on coal and water , and can only be propitiated by repeated offerings of that wonder-working hieroglyph -- the tikkut .