tsar, and Scott went back to the ladies'
compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a cloth
riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.

"Come in and have some tea," she said. "'Best thing in the world for
heat-apoplexy."

"Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?"

"'Never can tell," said William, wisely. "It's always best to be ready."

She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old
campaigner. A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of one of
the shuttered windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed in a wadded
basket, stood on the seat; and a travelling spirit-lamp was clamped
against the woodwork above it.

William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which saves the
veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot night. It was
characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action once settled, she
asked for no comments on it. Life among men who had a great deal of work
to do, and very little time to do it in, had taught her the wisdom of
effacing, as well as of fending for, herself. She did not by word or
deed suggest that she would be useful, comforting, or beautiful in their
travels, but continued about her business serenely: put the cups back
without clatter when tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her guests.

"This time last night," said Scott, "we didn't expect--er--this kind of
thing, did we?"

"I've learned to expect anything," said William. "You know, in our
service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course, this ought
to be a good thing for us all, departmentally--if we live."

"It knocks us out of the running in our own Province," Scott replied,
with equal gravity. "I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective Works this
cold weather, but there's no saying how long the famine may keep us."

"Hardly beyond October, I should think," said Martyn. "It will be ended,
one way or the other, then."

"And we've nearly a week of this," said William. "Sha'n't we be dusty
when it's over?"

For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a night and
a day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on a narrow-gauge
railway, they remembered how in the days of their apprenticeship they
had come by that road from Bombay. Then the languages in which the names
of the stations were written changed, and they launched south into a
foreign land, where the very smells were new. Many long and heavily
laden grain-trains were