Hawkins watched him for as long as it took to fill one cart.

"That's a good man," he said. "If all goes well I shall work him hard."
This was Jim Hawkins's notion of the highest compliment one human being
could pay another.

An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him
with the penalties of the law for that he, a member of the Subordinate
Medical Department, had been coerced and bound against his will and all
laws governing the liberty of the subject; the pink-shirted Eurasian
begging leave to see his mother, who happened to be dying some three
miles away: "Only verree, verree short leave of absence, and will
presently return, sar--"; the two constables, armed with staves,
bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a Mohammedan's contempt for all
Hindoos and foreigners in every line of his face, explaining to the
drivers that though Scott Sahib was a man to be feared on all fours, he,
Faiz Ullah, was Authority Itself.

The procession creaked past Hawkins's camp--three stained tents under
a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where a crowd of
hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.

"'Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it," said Scott to himself,
after a glance. "We'll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains
break."

But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the Famine
Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings of the
ordinary law. Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping women, in a
calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a gold puggaree.

"I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went away.
Can you lend it me? It's for condensed-milk for the babies," said she.

Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a word.
"For goodness sake, take care of yourself," he said.

"Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days. By the
way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you're to take one of Sir
Jim's horses. There's a grey Cabuli here that I thought would be just
your style, so I've said you'd take him. Was that right?"

"That's awfully good of you. We can't either of us talk much about
style, I am afraid."

Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at
the seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him
thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. "You look
very nice, I think. Are you sure you've e