none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the
underlings were not to be trusted. They had been tried many times
in sudden crises - by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle,
failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river - but no stress had
brought to light any man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock
would have honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked
themselves. Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the
months of office-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of
India, at the last moment, added two feet to the width of the
bridge, under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper,
and so brought to ruin at least half an acre of calculations - and
Hitchcock, new to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and
wept; the heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts
in England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of
commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were
passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite
obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young
Hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month, and borrowing
ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings of a year
in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue asserted
and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God into a man
so great that he feared only Parliament and said so till Hitchcock
wrought with him across his own dinner-table, and - he feared the
Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name. Then there was the
cholera that came in the night to the village by the bridge works;
and after the cholera smote the Smallpox. The fever they had
always with them. Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate of
the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of
the community, and Findlayson watched him wield his powers
temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. It