"Oh yes. She hadn't got so low as all that. But it gave me a shock, I can tell you, Jack, to meet her like that, though we had been doing all we could to find her." "And how did she seem? And what had she to say for herself?" "She looked prettier than I'd ever seen her--better dressed, you know, and all that." "And what did she say?" "She flatly refused to tell me who had brought her to London. She had heard we were leaving in the morning and she wanted to say good-bye--so she said." "Deuced odd! What did you do?" "Well--I was knocked all of a heap and didn't know what to do. Then I suddenly bethought me of Mine Beteta. She had been very kind to me, and only that afternoon, when I was saying good-bye, she had laughed and said her only regret was that I hadn't got into any scrape that she could help me out of. It was jolly nice of her, you know. So I bundled Kattie into a cab, and took her straight to madame, and left her with her." "Poor little Kattie! She was too good for that kind of thing. And you got no hint as to who---- "Not a word. I asked her straight, and she said she would not tell." "I'd like to wring his neck for him, whoever he was." "She probably knew we would feel that way, and that's why she wouldn't speak. And how have you been keeping, Jack? Seems to me you look thinner. Perhaps it's the way you dress--or don't dress. I never saw such a seedy, weedy-looking set. You'd certainly be taken for tramps in England." "Just you wait, my boy. If you get four months of this infernal loafing in dust and dirt and blazing sun, you'll come to it. And I may well be thin. I'd hang every commissary in the service. They starve us half the time and give us rubbish the rest." "That sounds bad. What's got them?" "Everything's at sixes and sevens. All the food and drink in one place and all the hungry and thirsty souls in another, some hundreds of miles away. If I was the Chief I'd hang a commissary every time the men go short. And the amount of red-tape! Oh, Lord! But you'll know all about it before you're through, my boy. Some of the fellows have chucked it and gone home." "Rotters!" "I don't know. It's been almost beyond endurance at times, and all so senseless, and nothing comes of it. Starving for a good cause is one thing, but starving simply because the men who ought to feed you are fools is quite another." "Overworked, I expect." "Underbrained, I should say. I'll ask you three months hence what you think about it all." Jim was very busy the next few days getting his men and horses on to Devna. His chiefs had found out that he could get more out of men and horses than most, and that when he took a thing in hand he did it. So work was heaped upon him and he was as happy as could be. He messed with Charlie Denham in a little tent on the shore, bathed morning and night, and Joyce and Denham's man saw that their masters--and incidentally themselves--were properly fed. CHAPTER XLIII JIM TO THE FORE