The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best kind of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the Civil Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as far to escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished native State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more money from the pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and despairing camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left a cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very many places in the East where it is not good or kind to let your acquaintances drop out of sight even for one short week. The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other. They squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as men without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood the dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of age,--which is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge. ‘Pilsener?’ said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his forehead. ‘Beer’s out, I’m sorry to say, and there’s hardly enough soda-water for to-night,’ said Hummil. ‘What filthy bad management!’ Spurstow snarled. ‘Can’t help it. I’ve written and wired; but the trains don’t come through regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,--as Lowndes knows.’ ‘Glad I didn’t come. I could ha’ sent you some if I had known, though. Phew! it’s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.’ This with a savage scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender. Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters. ‘What a sweet day!’ said he. The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless investigation of all Hummil’s possessions,--guns, tattered novels, saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times before, but there was really nothing else to do. ‘Got anything fresh?’ said Lowndes. ‘Last week’s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My father sent it out. It’s rather amusing.’ ‘One of those vestrymen that call ‘emselves M.P.’s again, is it?’ said Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.