"Eight cases broken out in barracks. If you can leave—come. Mackenzie."
He crushed the note in his hand.
"My respects to Dr. Mackenzie," he said quietly, raising his head and meeting the eyes of the trooper, "and I will be with him to-night."
He spent the morning in arranging matters and leaving orders with his chief helper, who was to remain for a time, more as a precautionary measure than for anything else, and then made his own scant preparations in haste to get to Mackenzie before nightfall.
He had thought first of slipping away, fearful of what the knowledge of his going might bring, but the more he thought of it the more he put the idea from him. After all the truth was the wisest.
He called all those of the half hundred natives together who had been spared of the scourge—most of whom he had fought death for, and he addressed them in Hindostanee. He spoke to them simply and briefly; he told them what they must do—not why they must do it, but simply because he ordered them to, and expected their obedience—relying on the worshipful fear with which they regarded him.
"If I hear of your disobeying me—and I shall hear it, for my ears are long and sharp—I shall come back and I will kill the dog who dared to disobey my commands, and you are to obey and do just what the Sahib I leave here tells you to do—do you understand?"
A low murmuring of assent greeted him, and one or two of the women held their babies up that they might look upon the great Sahib who was leaving them for a time; who was wise enough to know ten miles off if anyone disobeyed him; who was strong enough to kill the dog who tried to disobey his great commands.
And the murmuring of their voices followed him as he rode away from them later, and the echo of their "Sahib! Sahib! Sahib!" haunted him, not knowing that in the years that lay ahead, the native mothers would tell their babies of the greatness of the Sahib who once had come to them.
The shadows, the children of the sunset, lay thick upon the road, over which he journeyed back to Mackenzie, and in the silence he began to think of England and of Scotland, and of Cary.