where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with
the opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two or
three thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of
vast sums of coined silver. He had finished that spring, not without
credit, the last section of the great Mosuhl Canal, and--much against
his will, for he hated office work--had been sent in to serve during
the hot weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department,
with sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the
Province. Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and
everybody knew it.

Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn
had come out to India four years before, to keep house for her
brother, who, as everyone, again, knew, had borrowed the money to pay
for her passage, and that she ought, as all the world said, to have
married long ago. Instead of this, she had refused some half a dozen
subalterns, a civilian twenty years her senior, one major, and a man
in the Indian Medical Department. This, too, was common property. She
had 'stayed down three hot weathers,' as the saying is, because her
brother was in debt and could not afford the expense of her keep at
even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone, and
in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size
of a shilling--the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a
'Bagdad date.' This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats
into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out with acids.

None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years.
Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river on horseback;
once she had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight
attack of thieves on her brother's camp; had seen justice