off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event.  I drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing.  There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o-clock and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits.  I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of me.  The first one said, “It’s him!” The second said, “So it is!” And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped their foreheads.  “We seed there was a light burning across the road, and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my friend here, ’The office is open.  Let’s come along and speak to him as turned us back from Degumber State,’” said the smaller of the two.  He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction.  There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers.  “What do you want?” I asked.

“Half an hour’s talk with you, cool and comfortable, in the office,” said the red-bearded man.  “We’d like some drink,—­the Contrack doesn’t begin yet, Peachey, so you needn’t look,—­but what we really want is advice.  We don’t want money.  We ask you as a favour, because we found out you did us a bad turn about Degumber State.”

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands.  “That’s something like,” said he.  “This was the proper shop to come to.  Now, Sir, let me introduce you to Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our professions the better, for we have been most things in our time—­soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the ‘Backwoodsman’ when we thought the paper wanted one.  Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first, and see that’s sure.  It will save you cutting into my talk.  We’ll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light up.”

I watched the test.  The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid whisky-and-soda.

“Well and good,” said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his moustache.  “Let me talk now, Dan.  We have been all over India, mostly on foot.  We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn’t big enough for such as us.”