ey choked. Each morning, too, the goats
were fed; and since they would straggle without a leader, and since the
natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace
slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their
weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity
keenly; but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that
their children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the
strange foods, and crawled after the carts, blessing the master of the
goats.

"Give the women something to live for," said Scott to himself, as he
sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, "and they'll hang on
somehow. This beats William's condensed-milk trick all to pieces. I
shall never live it down, though."

He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship had come
in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available; found also an
overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts,
set back to cover the ground he had already passed. He left some of
the children and half his goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not
thanked by the Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he
knew what to do with. Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he
went on with his wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the
paddy. More babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of
the babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. "That" said
the interpreter, as though Scott did not know, "signifies that their
mothers hope in eventual contingency to resume them offeecially."

"The sooner, the better," said Scott; but at the same time he marked,
with the pride of ownership, how this or that little Ramasawmy was
putting on flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts were emptied he
headed for Hawkins's camp by the railway, timing his arrival to fit in
with the dinner-hour, for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He
had no desire to make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset
ordered it that when he had taken off his helmet to get the evening
breeze, the low light should fall across his forehead, and he could not
see what was before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with
new eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden
dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee
ran small naked Cupids. But she laughed--William, in a slate-coloured
blouse,