WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
trucks, filling them with starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp on the edge of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles south. Scott—Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again—would that same hour take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would go south, feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, where he would leave his starving—there would be no lack of starving on the route—and wait for orders by telegraph. Generally, Scott was in all small things to act as he thought best.
William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like her one brother, but Martyn's orders gave him no discretion. She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot, a horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking during the past week, but as self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim—who should have been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the title—took possession of her with a little gasp.
"Oh, I 'm so glad you 're here," she almost sobbed. "You ought n't to, of course, but there—there is n't another woman in the place, and we must help each other, you know; and we 've all the wretched people and the little babies they are selling."
"I 've seen some," said William.
"Is n't it ghastly? I 've bought twenty; they 're in our camp; but won't you have something to eat first? We 've more than ten people can do here; and I 've
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