escape doing service?

"So much," they argued, "for native constancy! So much for Mahommed
Gunga's boast that he knew of men who could be trusted! And so much for
Joanna's gratitude!"

The old woman had been saved by Rosemary McClean from the long-drawn-out
hell that is the life portion of most Indian widows, even of low caste;
she had had little to do, ever, beyond snooze in the shade and eat, and
run sometimes behind the pony--a task which came as easily to her as
did the other less active parts of her employment. Her desertion,
particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary McClean cry, and set her father
to quoting Shakespeare's "King Lear."

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude!"

All Scotsmen seem to have a natural proclivity for quoting
the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself. The Book of
Lamentations--Shakespeare's sadder lines--roll off their tongues
majestically and seem to give them consolation--as it were to lay a
sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of the songs of Robbie
Burns.

The poor old king of the poet's imagining, declaiming up above the
cliffs of Dover, could have put no more pathos into those immortal lines
than did Duncan McClean as he paced up and down between the hot wars
of the darkened room. The dry air parched his throat, and his ambition
seemed to shrivel in him as he saw the brave little woman who was all he
had sobbing with her head between her hands.

He turned to the Bible, but he could find no precedent in any of its
pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or
adversity. He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening
his throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the
improvised jar filter; but when the oven blast that makes the Indian
summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, he had found nothing
but admonishment to stand firm. There had been women, too, whose
deeds were worthy of record in that book, and he found no argument
for deserting his post on his daughter's account either. In the Bible
account, as he read it, it had always been the devil who fled when
things got too uncomfortable for him, and he was conscious of a
tight-lipped, stern contempt for the devil.

He had about made up his mind what line to take with his daughter, when
she ceased her sobbing and looked up through swollen eyes to relieve him
of the necessity for talking her over to his point view