hose tents stood close to
the line, and who came armed with written authorities and angry words
to cut off a truck. They were too busy to do more than nod at Scott
and Martyn, and stare curiously at William, who could do nothing
except make tea, and watch how her men staved off the rush of
wailing, walking skeletons, putting them down three at a time in
heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the marked trucks, or taking
receipts from the hollowed-eyed, weary white men, who spoke another
argot than theirs.

They ran out of ice, out of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were
six days and seven nights on the road, and it seemed to them like
seven times seven years.

At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red
fires of railway sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they
came to their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of
the Famine, unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command
of affairs.

Martyn, he decreed, then and there, was to live on trains till
further orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with
starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp
on the edge of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and
return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also
picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles
south. Scott--Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again--would, that
same hour, take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would go
south, feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, far from the
rail, where he would leave his starving--there would be no lack of
starving on the route--and wait for orders by telegraph. Generally,
Scott was in all small things to do what he thought best.

William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like
her one brother, but Martyn's orders gave him no discretion. She came
out, masked with dust from head to foot, a horse-shoe wrinkle on her
forehead, put here by much thinking during the past week, but as
self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim--who should have been Lady Jim, but
that no one remembered to call her aright--took possession of her
with a little gasp.

'Oh, I'm so glad you're here,' she almost sobbed. 'You oughtn't to,
of course, but there--there isn't another woman in the place, and we
must help each other, you know; and we've all the wretched people and
the little babies they are selling.'

'I've seen some,' said William.