The sinking of the well commenced with great energy. Shunker remained on the spot the whole day in order to see that the men did not idle. Friends and neighbours came and sat around and advised, and speculated how soon they would reach water. Shunker was confident that a depth of 15 feet would be sufficient. The ground, however, was very hard, and the men soon reached solid rock and blasting became necessary. Shunker was full of importance over this, and before an explosion took place rushed up and down the road in great excitement, warning travellers to halt. His interest in the well continued until the commencement of the rainy season obliged him to knock off for a while. But when the time came to resume operations Shunker's zeal had begun to flag. The well was already 15 feet deep and there was no sign of water, except that which had fallen during the monsoon. Shunker was growing uneasy at the amount of money which he had spent. Work was resumed, but only languidly. Then there came gaps of several weeks when no work was done at all, and finally it stopped altogether, and the scheme was apparently abandoned. Shunker, not knowing what to do with the piles of stone which had accumulated from his excavation, erected an immense shed with it in his yard, which he said would give shelter to his bullocks. But it was piled up unskilfully, and being without mortar, it soon became a ruin. Indians do not always profit by experience. It might be supposed that Shunker would hardly care to risk further experiments concerning wells. But following the advice of his father, an apparently shrewd man, he sunk another well in another garden. This time a European firm took the contract, and the cost was heavy. The spot chosen necessitated an unusually high platform for the bullocks who raise the water, which added a good deal to the expense. But a fatal mistake was made in the spot chosen for the well. It was sunk close to the bank of a river whose bed was many feet below it, and though they tapped a spring which would probably have provided a good store of water, it soon found its way out of the well to the lower level of the river, and the amount of water which remained was never deep enough to be of use. So this rather imposing-looking empty well stands as a conspicuous monument of an ill-advised scheme, involving total loss of the money that it cost.