He had been hard-bitten in his youth and trained in a hard, grim school.

In the Isle of Skye he had seen the little cabin where his mother lived pulled down to make more room for a fifty-thousand-acre deer-forest.

He had seen his mother beg.
He had worked his way to Edinburgh, toiled at starvation wages for the sake of leave to learn at night, burned midnight oil, and failed at the end of it, through ill health, to pass for his degree.
He had loved as only hard-hammered men can love, and had married after a struggle the very thought of which would have melted the courage of an ordinary man, only to see his wife die when her child was born.

And even then, in that awful hour, he had not felt the utterness of misery such as came to him when he saw that his work in Howrah was undone.

He had given of his best, and all his best, and it seemed that he had given it for nothing.
"Who was that man, father ?" asked a very weary voice through which courage seemed to live yet, as the tiniest suspicion of a sweet refrain still lives through melancholy bars.
"The man who took your home letters to Mahommed Gunga." "And-- ?" "He has promised to try to find a man for me who will take my report on this awful business to the Resident at Abu." "Father, listen! Listen, please!" Rosemary McClean drew a chair for him and knelt beside him.