‘Scott won’t care,’ said Martyn.  ’You can’t get a rise out of old Scotty.  I’ve been trying for eight years, and you’ve only known him for three.  How does he look?’

‘He looks very well,’ said William, and went away with a flushed cheek. ‘Bakri Scott, indeed!’ Then she laughed to herself, for she knew the country of her service.  ’But it will be Bakri all the same’; and she repeated it under her breath several times slowly, whispering it into favour.

When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the name far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as he led his paddy-carts to war.  The natives believed it to be some English title of honour, and the cart-drivers used it in all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of foreign japes, broke their heads.  There was very little time for milking now, except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott’s idea, and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern grains.  Enough paddy had come into the Eight Districts to hold the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly; and for that purpose no one was better than the big Canal officer, who never lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never questioned an order given.  Scott pressed on, saving his cattle, washing their galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost on the road; reported himself with his rice at the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by forced night-march to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins’s unvarying telegram:  ‘Do it again.’  And he did it again and again, and yet again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big map the tracks of his wheels gridironing the stricken lands.  Others did well—­Hawkins reported at the end that they all did well—­but Scott was the most excellent, for he kept good coined rupees by him, and paid for his own cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered extras, trusting to be recouped later.  Theoretically, the Government should have paid for every shoe and linchpin, for every hand employed in the loading; but Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length, contesting unauthorised expenditures of eight annas.  The man who wishes to make his work a success must draw on his own bank-account of money or other things as he goes.

‘I told you he’d work,’ said Jimmy to his wife at the end of six weeks.  ’He’s been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up north on the Mosuhl Canal for a year, and he gives one less trouble than young Martyn with his ten constables; and I’m morally certain—­only Government doesn’t recognise moral obligations—­that he’s spent about half his pay to grease his wheels.  Look at this, Lizzie, for one week’s work!  Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two days’ halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers (Rogers ought to have built it himself, the