"You think badly of us, Rajah Sahib," he said fiercely. "Perhaps you have a right to do so from what you have seen; but you have not seen all--no, not nearly all. You've seen us in the soft days when we've nothing to do but drill recruits and while away the time as best we can. Think what the monotony means--day after day the same work, the same faces. Who can blame us if we get slack and ready to do anything for a change? I know some of us are rotters--especially here in Marut. Most of us belong to the British Regiment, and are accustomed to luxury and ease in the old country. I haven't got that excuse--I'm in the Gurkhas--and what I do I do because I _am_ a rotter. But there are men who are not. There are men, Rajah Sahib, right up there by the northern provinces, who are made of steel and iron, real men, heroes--" Nehal Singh leaned forward and caught his companion by the arm. "Heroes?" he said with passionate earnestness. "Heroes?" Geoffries nodded. That look of enthusiastic sympathy won his heart and awoke his soldier's slumbering pride. "I'm no good at explaining," he said, "but I know of things that would stir your blood. For a whole year--my first year--I was up north in a mud fortress where there was only one other European officer. It was Nicholson. You mayn't have heard of him--precious few people have--but up there in that lonely, awful place, with wild hill-tribes about us and a handful of sepoys for our protection, he was a god--yes, a god; for there was not one of us that didn't worship him and honor him. We would have followed him to the mouth of hell. He was young, only six months a captain, and yet there was nothing he didn't seem to know, nothing he couldn't do. Every day he was in the saddle, reconnoitering, visiting the heads of the tribes, making peace, distributing justice. Every day he went out with his life in his hands, and every night he came back, quiet, unpretending, never boasting, never complaining, and yet we knew that somewhere he had risked himself to clear a stone out of our way, to win an enemy over to our side, to confirm a friend in his friendship. Yes, he was a man; and there are others like him. No one hears about them, but they don't care. They go on giving their lives and energy to their work, and never ask for thanks or reward. I--once hoped to be like that; but I came to Marut--and then--" He stumbled and stopped short. "I'm a ranting fool!" he went on angrily. "You won't understand, Rajah Sahib, but I couldn't stand your thinking that they are all like me--" Nehal Singh rose to his feet. "Nicholson!" he repeated slowly, as though he had not heard. "I shall remember that name. And there are more like him? That is well." Then he laid his hand on the young officer's shoulder. "I am going to help you," he said. "I am going to save you from whatever trouble you are in, and then you must go back to the frontiers and become a man after the ideal that has been set you. One day you can repay me."