then? "

Grannie said; "Then . . ."

But what is the use of going on any further with the story? It would
only lead on to what was more and more impossible. The boy of seven did
not know that, if there were some "What then? " after death, no
grandmother of a grandmother could tell us all about it.

But the child's faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the
mantle of death itself to turn him back. It would be outrageous for him
to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly
come to a stop. Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story
from the ever-shut chamber of the great End, but she does it so simply:
it is merely by floating the dead body on a banana stem on the river,
and having some incantations read by a magician. But in that rainy
night and in the dim light of a lamp death loses all its horror in the
mind of the boy, and seems nothing more than a deep slumber of a single
night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with
sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on
the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning
read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and
light.



THE HOME-COMING

Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new
mischief got into his head. There was a heavy log lying on the mud-flat