I let her go, and prepared for my customary walk. It turned out that the doctor, who lives with us, was going to visit a patient in the village the soldier’s wife had come from, and another patient in the village where the District Police Station is situated, so I joined him, and we drove off together.

I went into the Police Station, while the doctor attended to his business in that village.

The District Elder was not in, nor the clerk, but only the clerk’s assistant⁠—a clever lad whom I knew. I asked him about the woman’s husband, and why, being the only man in the family, he had been taken as a conscript.

The clerk’s assistant looked up the particulars, and replied that the woman’s husband was not the only man in the family: he had a brother.

“Then why did she say he was the only one?”

“She lied! They always do,” replied he, with a smile.