The Doctor looked up sharply. Ten years meant business; one can teach a lot in ten years--carpet-weaving, wood-carving, pottery-making--and the Doctor's hobby was his gaol. What he saw was a man, looking many years older than his age, haggard and grey, yet despite this with a lightness and suppleness in every limb. Though this figure was lean where the Overseer was fat, wrinkled where the Overseer showed smooth, there was a similarity in the rich colour of their skins, in the regularity of their features, which made the Englishman turn to look at the _Darogah_ with the mental remark that the race-characteristics of India were very instructive; for Shurruf was a Khoja also. "All right," said the Doctor. "Number five hundred and eight." "Five hundred and eight," repeated the habitual offender, calmly. "I will not forget. Salaam, _Huzoor!_ Salaam, _Darogah-jee!_" "Do you know the man?" asked the Doctor quickly of his subordinate; he was sharp as a needle, and there had been a note in the salutation which he did not understand. "He was in for two years when I was sub-overseer at Loodhiana, _Huzoor_," replied Shurruf, imperturbably. "He gave much trouble there; he will not here, since the Doctor-_sahib_ knows how to manage such as he." Once more there was an undertone, but the Doctor's attention was riveted by the adroit flattery, and he rose to begin his inspection with a smile. It was true; he did know how to manage a gaol, and there could not possibly be any cause for complaint when he was there to apportion each ounce of food scientifically, to rout every germ, every microbe, and treat even contumacy as a disease. The five hundred and odd prisoners were, as it were, the Doctor's chessmen. He marshalled them this way and that, checkmating their vile souls and bodies while they were in his care. If they passed out of it into their own, he took no heed. They might make what they liked of themselves. But if they died, and, as the phrase runs, chose the Guardianship of God, he buried them temporarily in the gaol graveyard with all possible sanitary precautions, against the time when relations or friends might appear to claim the corpse. There was no official regulation as to the limit of time within which such claim could be preferred; but as a dead body remains in the special Guardianship of God for a year, it was an understood thing that man should take over the task before the Almighty gave up the job; it was more satisfactory, especially if the corpse was a Hindu and had to be burned. As for the Doctor, he would have preferred to burn the lot, Hindu and Mahomedan alike; failing that, he--took precautions.