Majesty's possessions resembled the Miltonic hell in one particular at any rate—in being a region of fierce extremes. On winter mornings a biting wind, fresh from its icy home in the distant snow-clad range, cut one to the core; and people clustered, with chattering teeth and blue fingers, round blazing hearths, where great logs worthy of an English Christmas tempered the cruel atmosphere to a genial glow. When the 'Rains' came it poured a little deluge. During the eight months of summer the state of things resembled that prevailing in the interior of a well-constructed and well-supplied Arnott's stove. Then it was that the Sandy Tracts were seen in the complete development of their resources and in the fullest glory. Vast plains, a dead level but for an occasional clump of palms or the dome of some despoiled and crumbling tomb, stretched away on every side, and ended in a hazy quivering horizon that spoke of infinite heat. Over these ranged herds of cattle and goats, browsing on no one could see what, or bewildered buffaloes would lie, panting and contented, in some muddy pool, with little but horns, eyes, and nostrils exposed above the surface. Little ill-begotten stunted plants worked hard to live and grow and to weather the roaring fierce winds. The crows sat gasping, open-beaked, as if protesting against having been born into so sulphurous an existence. Here and there a well, with its huge lumbering wheel and patient bullocks, went creaking and groaning night and day, as if earth grudged the tiny rivulet, coming so toilfully from her dry breast, and gave it up with sighs of pain. The sky was cloudless, pitiless, brazen. The sun rose into it without a single fleck of vapour to mitigate its fierceness, and pierced, like a red-hot sword, the rash mortal who dared, unprotected, to meet its ray. All day it shone and glistened and blazed, until the very earth seemed to crack with heat, and the mere thought of it was pain. 'Ægypt,' to use the poet's phrase, 'ached in the sun's eye.' The natives tied their heads up in bags, covered their mouths, and carried their clothes between the sun and themselves. Europeans entrenched themselves behind barriers of moistened grass, lay outstretched under monster fans and consoled themselves with what cool drinks their means allowed, and with the conviction, which seemed to spring perennial in each sufferer's breast, that the present was by far the hottest summer ever known.

Dew there was none. You stepped from your door in the morning into a bed of sand, which no amount of watering could reduce to the proper solidity of a garden-path. As you came in at night you shook off the dust that had gathered on you in your evening stroll. Miles away the galloping horseman might be tracked by the little cloud that he stirred up as he went. The weary cattle trudged homeward from their day's work in a sand-storm of their own manufacture. There was sand in the air one breathed, in the food one tried to eat, in the water that pretended to assuage one's thirst: sand in heaven and sand on earth—and a great deal of sand in the heads of many of the officials.

This getting of sand into the head, and getting it in in a degree compatible neither with health, comfort, or efficiency, was a recognised malady in the Sandy Tracts. It cost the Government a great deal of money and the services of many a useful brain. Officers, when they felt themselves becoming unendurably sandy and their ideas proportionately confused, used to take furlough, and go home and try to get washed clear again at Malvern or Wiesbaden: and there was a famous physician in Mayfair, renowned for his skill in ridding the heads of those poor gentlemen of the unwelcome deposit, who made a reputation and a fortune by, so to speak, dredging them.

There was one official head, however, at Dustypore in which no particle of sand was to be found, and that was Mr. Strutt's. It was for this reason, probably, amongst others, that he was made Chief Secretary to the Salt Board, a post which, at the time when this history commences, was one of the most important, responsible, and lucrative in the entire service. For the Salt Board, as will hereafter be seen, was an institution whose dignity and powers had grown and grown until they almost overtopped those of the Agency itself. If the Salt Board was the embodiment of what was dignified and powerful in Dustypore, Mr. Strutt had concentrated in his own person the functions and attributes of the Board. He was prompt, indefatigable, self-satisfied, and, what his superiors valued him for especially, lucky.

A long career had taught him and the world that those who attacked him came off second-best. His answers were unanswerable, his reports effective, his explanations convincing. His nervous hand it was that depicted the early triumphs of the Dustypore Administration and in sonorous periods set forth the glories of the British rule—the roads, the canals, the hospitals and schools—the suppression of crime, the decreased mortality, the general passion of the inhabitants for female education. His figures were constantly quoted by people who wished to talk about India to English audiences, and his very name was a pillar of strength to the champions of the English rule. Even his enemies were constrained to admit that he possessed the art of 'putting it' to a degree of fearful and wonderful perfection.

The maxim, 'like master like man,' was as far as possible from being verified in the case of Mr. Strutt and his superiors. Of these Mr. Fotheringham, the Chairman, was lymphatic in temperament, inordinately vain, and the victim of an inveterate habit of enunciating platitudes. Cockshaw, who came next, was off-hand, superficial, and positive, with the positiveness of a man who hates deliberation and despises every form of uncertainty. Blunt, the third member, was a non-civilian, and had been brought out from England on account of his practical acquaintance with salt-mines, and of his having been a secretary in the Board of Trade. He was business-like, straightforward, and unconciliating; generally thought differently from his colleagues, and had the roughest possible manner of saying what he thought.

Such a trio had sometimes, as may well be imagined, no little trouble in preserving toward the outer world the aspect of serene, benevolent, and consistent infallibility, the maintenance of which Fotheringham regarded as the first of duties, Cockshaw did not in the least mind a row, so long as he was not kept too long at office for the purpose of making it. Blunt would have stayed at office till midnight, arguing doggedly, sooner than abandon his point. Happily Fotheringham had a great sense of propriety, concealed the dissensions of his colleagues from the public eye, and preserved the Board's dignity from ignominious collapse.

Under Strutt came a hierarchy of less important subordinates, who paved the long descent, so to speak, from the official altitudes in which the Salt Board had its being to the vulgar public who consumed the salt. Chief of these was Vernon, with whom the reader will speedily become better acquainted. Under him, again, came Mr. Whisp, the Assistant-Secretary, a young gentleman whose task it was to draw up minutes of the Board's proceedings, to draft its circulars and to collect the statistics out of which Strutt concocted his reports. He had thus, it will be seen, an opportunity of acquiring much useful information and a highly ornamental style, and Whisp was generally regarded in the service as a rising man.

CHAPTER II.

MAUD.