caste than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

'They are all one to me, ' said the Amritzar girl.

'That we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.

'Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands
are, as it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the
caste, but beyond that again' - she looked round timidly -'the
bond of the Pulton - the Regiment - eh?'

'My brother is in a Jat regiment,' said the cultivator. 'Dogras
be good men.'

'Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with
a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. 'Thy Sikhs thought
so when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal
in the face of eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three
months gone.'

He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies
of the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar
girl smiled; for she knew the talk
was to win her approval.

'Alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. 'So their villages
were burnt and their little children made homeless?'

'They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of
the Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?'