rders, and heard of Scott's
performances, he said, laughing: "Well, that settles it. He'll be Bakri
Scott to the end of his days." (Bakri in the Northern vernacular, means
a goat.) "What a lark! I'd have given a month's pay to have seen him
nursing famine babies. I fed some with conjee [rice-water], but that was
all right."

"It's perfectly disgusting," said his sister, with blazing eyes. "A man
does something like--like that--and all you other men think of is to
give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it's funny."

"Ah," said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.

"Well, you can't talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby the
Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India's the land of
nicknames."

"That's different," William replied. "She was only a girl, and she
hadn't done anything except walk like a quail, and she does. But it
isn't fair to make fun of a man."

"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 her
country. "But it will he 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. Sufficient paddy had come now 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 a