On and on went Ram Lal with the peg in his left hand and the hammer in his right.  He was dressed in the usual upcountry Indian style, in a long coat or Achkan which reached well below his knees and fluttered in the breeze.

As he went on his pace slackened.  When he had gone about half the distance he stopped and looked back.  We hoped he would return.  He put down the hammer and the peg, sat down on the sand facing us, took off his shoes.  Only some sand had got in.  He took up the peg and hammer and walked on.

But then we felt that his courage was oozing away.  Another fifty yards and he again stopped, and looked back at us.

Another fifty yards remained.  Will he return?  No! he again proceeded, but we could clearly see that his steps were less jaunty than when he had started.  We knew that he was trembling, we knew that he would have blessed us to call him back.  But we would not yield, neither would he.  Looking in our direction at every step he proceeded and reached the burning ghat.  He reached the identical spot where the pyre had been erected in the morning.

There was very little breeze,—­not a mouse stirring.  Not a soul was within 200 yards of him and he could not expect much help from us.  How poor Ram Lal’s heart must have palpitated!  When we see Ram Lal now how we feel that we should burst.

Well, Ram Lal knelt down, fixed the peg in the wet sandy soil and began hammering.  After each stroke he looked at us and at the river and in all directions.  He struck blow after blow and we counted about thirty.  That his hands had become nerveless we would understand, for otherwise a dozen strokes should have been enough to make the peg vanish in the soft sandy soil.

The peg went in and only about a couple of inches remained visible above the surface; and then Ram Lal thought of coming back.  He was kneeling still.  He tried to stand up, gave out a shrill cry for help and fell down face foremost.

It must have been his cry for help that made us forget our fear of the ghost, and we all ran at top speed towards the ghat.  It was rather difficult to run fast on the sand but we managed it as well as we could, and stopped only when we were about half a dozen yards from the unconscious form of Ram Lal.

There he lay senseless as if gone to sleep.  Our instinct told us that he was not dead.  We thanked God, and each one of us sent up a silent prayer.  Then we cried for help and a boatman who lived a quarter of a mile away came up.  He took up Ram Lal in his arms and as he was doing it tr—­rrrrrrrrrr—­went Ram Lal’s long coat.  The unfortunate lad had hammered the skirt of his long coat along with the peg into the ground.

We took Ram Lal to his house and explained to his mother that he had a bad fall in the football field, and there we left him.

The next morning at school, one student, who was a neighbour of Ram Lal, told us that the whole mischief had become known.