“It’s all over except the shouting. We sha’n’t need you Punjabis any more. On my honour, we sha’n’t. Martyn goes back in a few weeks; Arbuthnot’s returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government’s built as relief-work. Morten’s dead—he was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn’t know him. ’Pon my word, you and Will—Miss Martyn—seem to have come through it as well as anybody.” “Oh, how is she, by-the-way?” The voice went up and down as he spoke. “Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are adopting the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests; the Basil Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the rest. You should hear the little beggars howl when they’re sent away from William. She’s pulled down a bit, but so are we all. Now, when do you suppose you’ll be able to move?” “I can’t come into camp in this state. I won’t,” he replied pettishly. “Well, you _are_ rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it seemed to me they’d be glad to see you under any conditions. I’ll look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and you can pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up.” Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins’s inspection was ended, and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it was “not half bad,” and volunteered, further, that he had considered Scott his right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his duty to say as much officially. So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the famine-sheds were almost empty. “You see!” said Jim. “There isn’t much more to do. Better ride up and see the wife. They’ve pitched a tent for you. Dinner’s at seven. I’ve some work here.” Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: “My word, how pulled down you look!” “I’ve had a touch of fever. You don’t look very well yourself.” “Oh, I’m fit enough. We’ve stamped it out. I suppose you know?” Scott nodded. “We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told me.” “Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha’n’t you be glad to go back? I can smell the wood-smoke already”; William sniffed. “We shall be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don’t suppose even the Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the new year?” “It seems hundreds of years ago—the Punjab and all that—doesn’t it? Are you glad you came?” “Now it’s all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.” “Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?” “I managed it somehow—after you taught me.”