He spent three hours inspecting the work of the native magistrate, and came back to breakfast with his brows well set together over that official’s amiable tolerance of a popular way of procuring confessions among the police, which was by means of needles and the supposed criminal’s finger-nails. It had been practised in Bhugsi, as the native magistrate represented, for thousands of years, but it made John Church angry. He ate with stern eyes upon the table-cloth, and when the meal was over rode back to Bhugsi. There was only that one day, and beside the all-important matter of the sanitation he had to look at the schools, to inspect the gaol, to receive an address and to make a speech. He reflected on the terms of the speech as he rode, improving upon their salutary effect. He said to his private secretary, cantering alongside, that he had never known it so hot in April—the air was like a whip. It was borne in upon him once that if he could put down the burden of his work and of his dignity and stretch himself out to sleep beside the naked coolies who lay on their faces in the shadow of the pipal trees by the roadside, it would be a pleasant thing, but this he did not say to his private secretary. It was half-past five, and the bamboos were all alive with the evening twitter of hidden sparrows, before the Lieutenant-Governor returned. For an instant Judith, coming out at the sound of hoofs, failed to recognise her husband, he looked, with a thick white powder of dust over his beard and eyebrows, so old a man. He stooped in his saddle, too, and all the gauntness of his face and figure had a deeper accent. “Put His Honour to bed, Mrs. Church,” cried the Commissioner, lifting his hat as he rode on to camp. “He has done the work of six men to-day.” “You will be glad of some tea,” she said. He tumbled clumsily out of his saddle and leaned for a moment against his animal’s shoulder. The mare put her head round whinnying, but when Church searched in his pocket for her piece of sugar-cane and offered it to her, she snuffed it and refused it. He dropped the sugar-cane into the dust at her feet and told the syce to take her away. “If she will not eat her gram give me word of it,” he said. But she ate her gram. “Will you change first, John?” Judith asked with her hand on his coat-sleeve. “I think you should—you are wet through and through.” “Yes, I will change,” he said; but he dropped into the first chair he saw. The chair stood on the verandah, and the evening breeze had already begun to come up. He threw back his head and unfastened his damp collar and felt its gratefulness. In the intimate neighbourhood of the dâk-bungalow the private secretary could be heard splashing in his tub.