he worst check of any.
We had almost forgotten he knew German. Henceforward he conversed in
German each day with the enemy.

It is a strange thing, sahib,--not easy to explain--but I, who have
achieved some fluency in English and might therefore have admired
his gift of tongues, now began to doubt him in earnest--hating
myself the while, but doubting him. And Gooja Singh, who had talked
the most and dropped the blackest hints against him, now began to
take his side.

And Ranjoor Singh said nothing. Night after night he went to lie at
the point where our trench and the enemy's lay closest. There he
would talk with some one whom we never saw, while we sat shivering
in the mud. Cold we can endure, sahib, as readily as any; it is
colder in winter where I come from than anything I felt in Flanders;
but the rain and the mud depressed our spirits, until with these two
eyes I have seen grown men weeping.

They kept us at work to encourage us. Our spells in the trench were
shortened and our rests at the rear increased to the utmost
possible. Only Ranjoor Singh took no vacation, remaining ever on the
watch, passing from one trench to another, conversing ever with the
enemy.

We dug and they dug, each side laboring everlastingly to find the
other's listening places and to blow them up by means of mining, so
that the earth became a very rat-run. Above-ground, where were only
ruin and barbed wire, there was no sign of activity, but only a
great stench that came from bodies none dared bury. We were thankful
that the wind blew oftenest from us to them; but whichever way the
wind blew Ranjoor Singh knew no rest. He was ever to be found where
the lines lay closest at the moment, either listening or talking. We
understood very well that he was carrying out orders given him at
the rear, but that did not make the squadron or the regiment like
him any better, and as far as that went I was one with them; I hated
to see a squadron leader stoop to such intrigues.

It was plain enough that some sort of intrigue was making headway,
for the Germans soon began to toss over into our trench bundles of
printed pamphlets, explaining in our tongue why they were our best
friends and why therefore we should refuse to wage war on them. They
threw printed bulletins that said, in good Punjabi, there was
revolution from end to end of India, rioting in England, utter
disaster to the British fleet, and that our way home again to India
had been cut by t