noon
For reasons which will appear , I never went to the Fort while Khem Singh was then within its walls . I knew him only as a grey head seen from Lalun 's window -- a grey head and a harsh voice . But natives told me that , day by day , as he looked upon the fair lands round Amara , his memory came back to him and , with it , the old hatred against the Government that had been nearly effaced in far-off Burma . So he raged up and down the West face of the Fort from morning till noon and from evening till the night , devising vain things in his heart , and croaking war-songs when Lalun sang on the City wall . As he grew more acquainted with the Subaltern he unburdened his old heart of some of the passions that had withered it . `` Sahib , '' he used to say , tapping his stick against the parapet , `` when I was a young man I was one of twenty thousand horsemen who came out of the City and rode round the plain here . Sahib , I was the leader of a hundred , then of a thousand , then of five thousand , and now ! ''