We stood before him like two rows of dumb men, gazing at his face.  I have heard the English say that our eastern faces are impossible to read, but that can only be because western eyes are blind.  We can read them readily enough.  Yet we could not read Ranjoor Singh’s that day.  It dawned on us as we stared that we did not understand, but that he did; and there is no murder in that mood.

Before we could gather our wits he began to speak to us, and we listened as in the old days when at least a squadron of us had loved him to the very death.  A very unexpected word was the first he used.

“Simpletons!” said he.

Sahib, our jaws dropped.  Simpletons was the last thing we had thought ourselves.  On the contrary, we thought ourselves astute to have judged his character and to have kept our minds uncorrupted by the German efforts.  Yet we were no longer so sure of ourselves that any man was ready with an answer.

He glanced over his shoulder to left and right.  There were no Germans inside the fence; none near enough to overhear him, even if he raised his voice.  So he did raise it, and we all heard.

“I come from Berlin!”

“Ah!” said we—­as one man.  For another minute he stood eying us, waiting to see whether any man would speak.

“We be honest men!” said a trooper who stood not far from me, and several others murmured, so I spoke up.

“He has not come for nothing,” said I.  “Let us listen first and pass judgment afterward.”

“We have heard enough treachery!” said the trooper who had spoken first, but the others growled him down and presently there was silence.

“You have eyes,” said Ranjoor Singh, “and ears, and nose, and lips for nothing at all but treachery!” He spoke very slowly, sahib.  “You have listened, and smelled for it, and have spoken of nothing else, and what you have sought you think you have found!  To argue with men in the dark is like gathering wind into baskets.  My business is to lead, and I will lead.  Your business is to follow, and you shall follow.”  Then, “Simpletons!” said he again; and having said that he was silent, as if to judge what effect his words were having.

No man answered him.  I can not speak for the others, although there was a wondrous maze of lies put forth that night by way of explanation that I might repeat.  All I know is that through my mind kept running against my will self-accusation, self-condemnation, self-contempt!  I had permitted my love for Ranjoor Singh to be corrupted by most meager evidence.  If I had not been his enemy, I had not been true to him, and who is not true is false.  I fought with a sense of shame as I have since then fought with thirst and hunger.  All the teachings of our Holy One accused me.  Above all, Ranjoor Singh’s face accused me.  I remembered that for more than twenty years he had stood to all of us for an example of what Sikh honor truly is, and that he had been aware of it.