"A thousand pardons, sir, and with due respect, you have made a bloomer: misquotation, sir. Divine bard wrote: ’A little _learning_ is a dangerous thing;’ and I understand him to mean, if even a _little_ learning in a man is dangerous to critic who tries to bowl him out, how much more dangerous is a fat lot!" Mr. Appleton found it necessary at this point to break away, and Ditta Lal’s further exposition was lost. One evening, when the work of the bridge makers was nearing completion, the accepted explanation of Pope’s line was brought home to the Babu by a rather unpleasant experience. He had walked along the finished portion of the pathway, which consisted of two lines of stout and broad planks supported by the cantilevers, these resting on the thick beams firmly embedded in the rock. The workmen on their swinging platform, Nurla Bai and Black Jack, had just laid the planks forming one bridge section across the gap, and were about to knock off work for the day. Ditta Lal was so eager to prove the soundness of his calculations, and demonstrate the valuable share he believed himself to have had in this engineering feat, that he took it into his head to walk across the planks to the other side. He had sufficient caution to hold on to the rope which had been carried along the smaller poles just above the level of his head. "Hi, Ditta Lal! Come back!" shouted Bob from behind him. "The planks aren’t nailed down yet." The Babu halted and looked round with an air of pained astonishment. "Sir," he said, "it is as safe as eggs. Planks are held firm by my own avoirdupois. I have worked it out." Still holding the rope with one hand, with the other he drew from his pocket a sheet of paper on which he had made his last calculation. "The weight which these planks will tolerate," he continued, "is eleven hundred and eighty-six pounds fifteen point eight ounces gross. My weight is two hundred and forty-four pounds and a fraction nett, by which I mean my own corpus without togs. Q.E.D. Suppose I jump, even then energy I develop is innocuous. I demonstrate the quod." He replaced the paper in his pocket, took the rope in both hands, and lifting his feet, to the boys’ horror came down ponderously on the planks. The result was alarming. One of the planks was jerked off the beams on which it rested, and fell with a splash into the swirling river below. The other turned up on its edge; Ditta Lal sought to keep his footing, but his feet slid off, the plank fell, and he was left hanging on the rope alone, which sagged deeply under the tremendous strain.