‘Let the lad alone,’ said his uncle.  ’He was but two months there, and he was chosen for good cause.’

Theoretically, all Sikhs are equal.  Practically, there are differences, as none know better than well-born, land-owning folk, or long-descended chaplains from Amritsar.

‘Hast thou heard anything in England to match my tale?’ the Chaplain sneered.

’I saw more than I could understand, so I have locked up my stories in my own mouth,’ the Havildar-Major replied meekly.

‘Stories?  What stories?  I know all the stories about England,’ said the Chaplain.  ’I know that terains run underneath their bazaars there, and as for their streets stinking with mota kahars, only this morning I was nearly killed by Duggan Sahib’s mota-kahar.  That young man is a devil.’

‘I expect Grunthi-jee,’ said the Subadar-Major, ’you and I grow too old to care for the Kahar-ki-nautch—­the Bearer’s dance.’  He named one of the sauciest of the old-time nautches, and smiled at his own pun.  Then he turned to his nephew.  ’When I was a lad and came back to my village on leave, I waited the convenient hour, and, the elders giving permission, I spoke of what I had seen elsewhere.’

‘Ay, my father,’ said the Havildar-Major, softly and affectionately.  He sat himself down with respect, as behoved a mere lad of thirty with a bare half-dozen campaigns to his credit.

‘There were four men in this affair also,’ he began, ’and it was an affair that touched the honour, not of one regiment, nor two, but of all the Army in Hind.  Some part of it I saw; some I heard; but all the tale is true.  My father’s brother knows, and my priest knows, that I was in England on business with my Colonel, when the King—­the Great Queen’s son—­completed his life.

’First, there was a rumour that sickness was upon him.  Next, we knew that he lay sick in the Palace.  A very great multitude stood outside the Palace by night and by day, in the rain as well as the sun, waiting for news.

’Then came out one with a written paper, and set it upon a gate-side—­the word of the King’s death—­and they read, and groaned.  This I saw with my own eyes, because the office where my Colonel Sahib went daily to talk with Colonel Forsyth Sahib was at the east end of the very gardens where the Palace stood.  They are larger gardens than Shalimar here’—­he pointed with his chin up the lines—­’or Shahdera across the river.

’Next day there was a darkness in the streets, because all the city’s multitude were clad in black garments, and they spoke as a man speaks in the presence of his dead—­all those multitudes.  In the eyes, in the air, and in the heart, there was blackness.  I saw it.  But that is not my tale.