We compromised things by saying the Lord's Prayer with a private
unofficial prayer for the peace of the soul of The Boy. Then we
filled in the grave and went into the verandah--not the house--to
lie down to sleep. We were dead-tired.

When we woke the Major said, wearily: "We can't go back till to-
morrow. We must give him a decent time to die in. He died early
THIS morning, remember. That seems more natural." So the Major
must have been lying awake all the time, thinking.

I said: "Then why didn't we bring the body back to the
cantonments?"

The Major thought for a minute:--"Because the people bolted when
they heard of the cholera. And the ekka has gone!"

That was strictly true. We had forgotten all about the ekka-pony,
and he had gone home.

So, we were left there alone, all that stifling day, in the Canal
Rest House, testing and re-testing our story of The Boy's death to
see if it was weak at any point. A native turned up in the
afternoon, but we said that a Sahib was dead of cholera, and he ran
away. As the dusk gathered, the Major told me all his fears about
The Boy, and awful stories of suicide or nearly-carried-out
suicide--tales that made one's hair crisp. He said that he himself
had once gone into the same Valley of the Shadow as the Boy, when
he was young and new to the country; so he understood how things
fought together in The Boy's poor jumbled head. He also said that
youngsters, in their repentant moments, consider their sins much