It was, therefore, at my suggestion that he decided to go one moon-light
night and hammer down a wooden peg into the soft sandy soil of the
Hindoo Burning Ghat, it being well known that the ghosts generally put
in a visible appearance at a burning ghat on a moon-light night. (A
burning ghat is the place where dead bodies of Hindoos are cremated).

It was the warm month of April and the river had shrunk into the size of
a nullah or drain. The real pukka ghat (the bathing place, built of
bricks and lime) was about 200 yards from the water of the main stream,
with a stretch of sand between.

The ghats are only used in the morning when people come to bathe, and in
the evening they are all deserted. After a game of football on the
school grounds we sometimes used to come and sit on the pukka ghat for
an hour and return home after nightfall.

Now, it was the 23rd of April and a bright moon-light night, every one
of us (there were about a dozen) had told the people at home that there
was a function at the school and he might be late. On this night, it
was arranged that the ghost test should take place.

The boy who had challenged the ghost, Ram Lal, was to join us at the
pukka ghat at 8 P.M.; and then while we waited there he would walk
across the sand and drive the peg into the ground at the place where a
dead body had been cremated that very morning. We were to supply the peg
and the hammer. (I had to pay the school gardener two annas for the loan
of a peg and a hammer).

Well, we procured the peg and the hammer and proceeded to the pukka
ghat. If the gardener had known what we required the peg and the hammer