tor of the Pitiful, and otherwise did him great honor.
"All right, all right!" came Thorneycroft's impatient rejoinder. "I see that you got my cable. Is the bullock-cart ready?"
"Yes, heaven-born!" And the babu pointed at the tonga, the bullock-cart, that came ghostlike out of the whirling sandstorm.
"Good enough." He swung himself up. "Ready. Chuck the bedding and the ice in the back. Let her go!" he said to the driver, who had his jaws bandaged after the manner of desertmen, and the tonga started off, dipping and plunging across the ridges like a small boat in a short sea.
The babu squatted by Thorneycroft's side, talking softly, and again the Englishman yawned. But this time there was a slight affectation in his yawn, and affectation, too, as of one weaving close to the loom of lies, in his words:
"Yes, yes. I fancy it is the old story. Some jealous wildcat of a hill woman—"
"No, heaven-born!" cut in the babu. He winked his heavy-lidded eyes slowly as if to tell the other that he was "on." "This time it is different. This time there is no woman's jealousy brewing unclean
