Gooja Singh led the grumbling now—­he who had been first to prophesy how we should be turned into infantry.  They kept us at the rear, and took away our horses—­took even our spurs, making us drill with unaccustomed weapons.  And I think that the beginning of the new distrust of Ranjoor Singh was in resentment at his patience with the bayonet drill.  We soldiers are like women, sahib, ever resentful of the new—­aye, like women in more ways than one; for whom we have loved best we hate most when the change comes.

Once, at least a squadron of us had loved Ranjoor Singh to the death.  He was a Sikh of Sikhs.  It had been our boast that fire could not burn his courage nor love corrupt him, and I was still of that mind; but not so the others.  They began to remember how he had stayed behind when we left India.  We had all seen him in disguise, in conversation with that German by the Delhi Gate.  We knew how busy he had been in the bazaars while the rumors flew.  And the trooper who had stayed behind with him, who had joined us with him at the very instant of the charge that night, died in the charge; so that there was none to give explanation of his conduct.  Ranjoor Singh himself was a very rock for silence.  Our British officers said nothing, doubtless not suspecting the distrust; for it was a byword that Ranjoor Singh held the honor of the squadron in his hand.  Yet of all the squadron only the officers and I now trusted him—­the Sikh officers because they imitated the British; the British because faith is a habit with them, once pledged, and I—­God knows.  There were hours when I did distrust him—­black hours, best forgotten.

The war settled down into a siege of trenches, and soon we were given a section of a trench to hold.  Little by little we grew wise at the business of tossing explosives over blind banks—­we, who would rather have been at it with the lance and saber.  Yet, can a die fall which side up it will?  Nay, not if it be honest!  We were there to help.  We who had carried coal could shovel mud, and as time went on we grumbled less.

But time hung heavy, and curiosity regarding Ranjoor Singh led from one conjecture to another.  At last Gooja Singh asked Captain Fellowes, and he said that Ranjoor Singh had stayed behind to expose a German plot—­that having done so, he had hurried after us.  That explanation ought to have satisfied every one, and I think it did for a time.  But who could hide from such a man as Ranjoor Singh that the squadron’s faith in him was gone?  That knowledge made him savage.  How should we know that he had been forbidden to tell us what had kept him?  When he set aside his pride and made us overtures, there was no response; so his heart hardened in him.  Secrecy is good.  Secrecy is better than all the lame explanations in the world.  But in this war there has been too much secrecy in the wrong place.  They should have let him line us up and tell us his whole story.  But later, when perhaps he might have done it, either his pride was too great or his sense of obedience too tightly spun.  To this day he has never told us.  Not that it matters.