hey said no more until sleep fell on them; and at dawn
Ranjoor Singh took hold of us again and made us drill until our feet
burned on the gravel and our ears were full of the tramp--tramp--tramp,
and the ek--do--tin of manual exercise.

"Listen!" said he to me, when he had dismissed us for dinner, and I
lingered on parade. "Caution the men that any breach of discipline
would be treated under German military law by drum-head court
martial and sentence of death by shooting. Advise them to avoid
indiscretions of any kind," said he.

So I passed among them, pretending the suggestion was my own, and
they resented it, as I knew they would. But I observed from about
that time they began to look on Ranjoor Singh as their only possible
protector against the Germans, so that their animosity against him
was offset by self-interest.

The next day came a staff officer who marched us to the station,
where a train was waiting. Impossible though it may seem, sahib, to
you who listen, I felt sad when I looked back at the huts that had
been our prison, and I think we all did. We had loathed them with
all our hearts all summer long, but now they represented what we
knew and we were marching away from them to what we knew not, with
autumn and winter brooding on our prospects.

Not all our wounded had been returned to us; some had died in the
German hospitals.. Two hundred-and-three-and-thirty of us all told,
including Ranjoor Singh, lined up on the station platform--fit and
well and perhaps a little fatter than was seemly.

Having no belongings other than the rifles and knapsacks and what we
stood in it took us but a few moments to entrain. Almost at once the
engine whistled and we were gone, wondering whither. Some of the
troopers shouted to Ranjoor Singh to ask our destination, but he
affected not to hear. The German staff officer rode in the front
compartment alone, and Ranjoor Singh rode alone in the next behind
him; but they conversed often through the window, and at stations
where the two of them got out to stretch their legs along the
platform they might have been brothers-in-blood relating love-affairs.
Our troopers wondered.

"Our fox grows gray," said they, "and his impudence increases."

"Would it help us out of this predicament," said I, "if he smote
that German in the teeth and spat on him?"

They laughed at that and passed the remark along from window to
window, until I roared at them to keep their heads in. There w