uarding of
irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of all
castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver.

He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of
the great Mosuhl Canal, and--much against his will, for he hated
office-work--had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the
accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the
sweltering sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this;
William, his sister, knew it; and everybody knew it. Scott knew, too,
as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India
four years ago to keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew,
had borrowed the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as
all the world said, to have married at once. In stead of this, she
had refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her
senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department. This,
too, was common property. She had "stayed down three hot weathers," as
the saying is, because her brother was in debt and could not afford the
expense of her keep at even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was
white as bone, and in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar
about the size of a shilling--the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the
same as a "Bagdad date." This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly
eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.

None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she
had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of
thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice administered, with long
sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi
with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had entirely fallen out
of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of
the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing
sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her experiences by six weeks
of typhoid fever, during which her head had been shaved and hoped to
keep her twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that
the aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the
ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl
thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over
her he