WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
I shall get my orders officially some time to-morrow. I 'm awfully glad I happened to drop in. 'Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here—do you know?"
Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. "McEuan," said he, "from Murree."
Scott chuckled. "He thought he was going to be cool all summer. He 'll be very sick about this. Well, no good talking. 'Night."
Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to rest on a string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock trunks, a leather water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and the Club secretary's receipt for last month's bill was under his pillow. His orders came next morning, and with them an unofficial telegram from Sir James Hawkins, who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when he had once met them, bidding him report himself with all speed at some unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the south, for the famine was sore in the land, and white men were needed.
A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering a little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three months' peace. He was Scott's successor—another cog in the machinery, moved forward behind his fellow whose services, as the official announcement ran, "were placed at the disposal of the Madras Government for famine duty until further orders." Scott handed over the funds in his charge, showed him the coolest corner in the office, warned him
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