sband goes to the grave with his dead wife,
the living wife with her dead husband. So did our fathers, and so must
we do. The law changes not, and all must submit to it!"

As he spoke the friends and relations of the unhappy pair began to
assemble. The body, decked in rich robes and sparkling with jewels,
was laid upon an open bier, and the procession started, taking its way
to a high mountain at some distance from the city, the wretched
husband, clothed from head to foot in a black mantle, following
mournfully.

When the place of interment was reached the corpse was lowered, just as
it was, into a deep pit. Then the husband, bidding farewell to all his
friends, stretched himself upon another bier, upon which were laid
seven little loaves of bread and a pitcher of water, and he also was
let down-down-down to the depths of the horrible cavern, and then a
stone was laid over the opening, and the melancholy company wended its
way back to the city.

You may imagine that I was no unmoved spectator of these proceedings;
to all the others it was a thing to which they had been accustomed from
their youth up; but I was so horrified that I could not help telling
the king how it struck me.

"Sire," I said, "I am more astonished than I can express to you at the
strange custom which exists in your dominions of burying the living
with the dead. In all my travels I have never before met with so cruel
and horrible a law."

"What would you have, Sindbad?" he replied. "It is the law for
everybody. I myself should be buried with the Queen if she were the
first to die."

"But, your Majesty," said I, "dare I ask if this law applies to
foreigners also?"

"Why, yes," replied the king smiling, in what I could but consider a
very heartless manner, "they are no exception to the rule if they have
married in the country."

When I heard this I went home much cast down, and from that time
forward my mind was never easy. If only my wife's little finger ached
I fancied she was going to die, and sure enough before very long she
fell really ill and in a few days breathed her last. My dismay was
great, for it seemed to me that to be buried alive was even a worse
fate than to be devoured by cannibals, nevertheless there was no
escape. The body of my wife, arrayed in her richest robes and decked
with all her jewels, was laid upon the bier. I followed it, and after
me came a great procession, headed by the king and all his nobles, and