Guru Gobind Singh Ji had men whose job was to travel round the country, sing kirtan, look after the sangat in their part of the world, and bring in whatever the Sikhs there had given.
They sat in a high place and people respected them, and many of them had given their whole lives to it honestly.
But over the years some of them had gone bad, and had started keeping what was not theirs.
So Guru Ji sent word for all of them to come to Anandpur and explain themselves. A good number of them did not come at all. Then Guru Ji said: go and fetch them.
One of them was called Bhai Feru Ji, and he looked after all the country between the rivers Ravi and Satluj.
He had not come the first time either, but only because the message never reached him. The moment the second one arrived he got up and went with the Sikhs who had come for him.
And on the road he said a strange thing to them.
Tie my hands, he said. And pull me along by my beard.
They would not do it. You do not do that to a man like that.
So he did it himself. He took hold of his own beard and pulled it, and walked the whole way like that, and when he came into the hall in front of Guru Ji, he was still standing there holding his own beard.
Somebody read out the charge against him. He has been keeping the offerings for years.
Guru Gobind Singh Ji looked at him.
Then love came up in Guru Ji's face, and he looked at him again, more kindly still. Then he shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them.
And he got up off his seat, and walked over, and put his arms round Bhai Feru Ji.
You have sent me every offering, he said. I received all of it.
Who caught you and dragged you in here?
You are not Feru, he said. You are Bhai Feru Ji, true like your beard.
Somebody in the hall said quietly, the way people do: but Guru Ji, he has sent nothing.
And Guru Ji said: I received it direct.
Then he told them what had actually been happening all those years.
He has been spending every coin of it on the poor of his own country, said Guru Ji. He never kept anything for himself. When he needed to eat, he ate in the langar like anybody else.
I once told him, said Guru Ji, that money spent on the poor arrives in Guru Ji's treasury.
He simply believed me and did it.
There is a lot in that small line, and it is worth stopping on. Bhai Feru Ji had been told something, and he had not argued with it, or been clever about it, or asked what would happen to his own name if people misunderstood. He had just done it, quietly, for years, and let them think whatever they liked.
He was a man with almost nothing he wanted for himself. He wrote poetry, though most of it is lost now. And when he sat in the sangat, he saw Guru Ji there.
Then Guru Gobind Singh Ji did the last thing.
He took a turban, and with his own hands he tied it round Bhai Feru Ji's head in front of everybody, and gave him his name for good: Bhai Feru Ji, true like his beard.
He went back to his own country afterwards, and he stayed there the rest of his life, and gave the Lord's name to thousands upon thousands of people.
And went on looking after the poor, presumably, without mentioning it to anybody.