to catch the Southern Mail at the loopholed and bastioned railway-station.  The heat from the thick brick walls struck him across the face as if it had been a hot towel, and he reflected that there were at least five nights and four days of travel before him.  Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged into 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 travel with her husband if she wants to, and William says she’s on the same footing.  You see, we’ve been together all our lives, more or less, since my people died.  It isn’t as if she were an ordinary sister.’