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The Sadhu I had won my guru's favour so successfully that had I stuck to him, I am sure I should have inherited his pony and his camel after his death. But it is now little use regretting my folly in having spurned the proferred gift of fortune.

The two boys recovered from their illness. The epidemic now appeared in its most terrible form. He who has not seen with his own eyes what this means can never be made to understand it. People began to flee, young and old, man, woman, child, all without distinction. In those houses in which one saw any traces of human habitation one would find only helpless mothers sitting by their stricken children.

Ram Babu also put all his belongings into bullock-carts, a thing he would have done much earlier if his children had not fallen ill. For the past five or six days I had noticed an overpowering lethargy creeping over my limbs and an uncontrollable depression of spirits. This was due, I thought, to the strain on my system caused by my having kept awake so many successive nights. One morning my head began to ache; I could eat nothing all day, and in the evening I realised that I had got fever. That night the family was occupied in packing up, so there was no sleep for anyone. Rather late at night Ram Babu's wife came to me and said, 'Sannyasi-dada, why don't you too come with us as far as Arrah?'

'Yes, I'll come,' I said. 'But you will have to give me room in your carts.'

'But why, sannyasi-dada? You know we could not get more than two carts,' said this sister of mine; 'there is not even room for all of us.'