shifted one hand with an iron bracelet on the wrist.

'Was there by any chance any woman at the back of it?' the
Havildar-Major murmured. 'I was not here when the thing happened.'

'Yes! Yes! Yes! We all know that thou wast in England eating and
drinking with the Sahibs. We are all surprised that thou canst still
speak Punjabi.' The Subadar-Major's carefully-tended beard bristled.

'There was no woman,' the Regimental Chaplain growled. 'It was land.
Hear, you! Rutton Singh and Attar Singh were the elder of four brothers.
These four held land in--what was the village's name?--oh, Pishapur,
near Thori, in the Banalu Tehsil of Patiala State, where men can still
recognise right behaviour when they see it. The two younger brothers
tilled the land, while Rutton Singh and Attar Singh took service with
the Regiment, according to the custom of the family.'

'True, true,' said the Havildar-Major. 'There is the same arrangement in
all good families.'

'Then, listen again,' the Regimental Chaplain went on. 'Their kin on
their mother's side put great oppression and injustice upon the two
younger brothers who stayed with the land in Patiala State. Their
mother's kin loosened beasts into the four brothers' crops when the
crops were green; they cut the corn by force when it was ripe; they
broke down the water-courses; they defiled the wells; and they brought
false charges in the law-courts against all four brothers. They did not
spare even the cotton-seed, as the saying is.

'Their mother's kin trusted that the young men would thus be forced by
weight of trouble, and further trouble and perpetual trouble, to quit
their lands in Pishapur village in Banalu Tehsil in Patiala State. If
the young men ran away, the land would come whole to their mother's kin.
I am not a regimental school-master, but is it understood, child?'

'Understood,' said the Havildar-Major grimly. 'Pishapur is not the only
place where the fence eats the field instead of protecting it. But
perhaps there was a woman among their mother's kin?'

'God knows!' said the Regimental Chaplain. 'Woman, or man, or
law-courts, the young men would _not_ be driven off the land which was
their own by inheritance. They made appeal to Rutton Singh and Attar
Singh, their brethren who had taken service with _us_ in the Regiment,
and so knew the world, to help them in their long war against their
mother's kin in Pishapur. For that reason, because their own land and
the honour of