the crowd on the stone platform,
while Scott, a black cheroot between his teeth, waited till his
compartment should be set away. A dozen native policemen, with their
rifles and bundles, shouldered into the press of Punjabi farmers,
Sikh craftsmen, and greasy-locked Afreedee pedlars, escorting with
all pomp Martyn's uniform case, water-bottles, ice-box, and
bedding-roll. They saw Faiz Ullah's lifted hand, and steered for it.

'My Sahib and your Sahib,' said Faiz Ullah to Martyn's man, 'will
travel together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the
servants' places close by, and because of our masters' authority none
will dare to disturb us.'

When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down
coatless and bootless on the broad leather-covered bunk. The heat
under the iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything
over a hundred degrees. At the last moment Martyn entered, hot and
dripping.

'Don't swear,' said Scott, lazily; 'it's too late to change your
carriage; and we'll divide the ice.'

'What are you doing here?' said the policeman.

'Lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it's a bender
of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?'

'A dozen. Suppose I'll have to superintend relief distributions.
Didn't know you were under orders too.'

'I didn't till after I left you last night. Raines had the news
first. My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and
I got off at once. Shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't be a good
thing--this famine--if we come through it alive.'

'Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,' said Martyn; and
then, after a pause: 'My sister's here.'

'Good business,' said Scott, heartily. 'Going to get off at Umballa,
I suppose, and go up to Simla. Who'll she stay with there?'

'No-o; that's just the trouble of it. She's going down with me.'

Scott sat bolt upright under the oil lamp as the train jolted past
Tarn-Taran station. 'What! You don't mean you couldn't afford--'

'Oh, I'd have scraped up the money somehow.'

'You might have come to me, to begin with,' said Scott, stiffly; 'we
aren't altogether strangers.'

'Well, you needn't be stuffy about it. I might, but--you don't know
my sister. I've been explaining and exhorting and entreating and
commanding and all the rest of it all day--lost my temper since seven
this morning, and haven't got it back yet--but she wouldn't hear of
any compromise, A woman's entitled to trave