,
a contemplative young fire-worshipper, with eyes as profound as the
philosophy of Zoroaster. I saw the dismal procession depart from the
house, and my heart ached for the little Gheber.

Four awful creatures, that were like ghosts, clad all in white, solemnly
dumb and veiled, bore him away on an iron bier. When they arrived at the
drawbridge, great sheets of copper were spread before them, and they
crossed upon those; for wood is sacred to their adored Element, and the
touch of "them on whose shoulders the dead doth ride" would pollute it.

So they carried little Kirsajee to Golgotha, their Place of Skulls,
which is a dreary, treeless field, encompassed round about with a blank
wall; and they laid him naked in a stone trough on the edge of a great
pit, and left him there, betaking them, still solemnly veiled and mute,
to their homes again.

All but my Parsee neighbor; he went and sat him down, like Hagar in the
wilderness, over against the dead Kirsajee, "a good way off, as it were
a bowshot"; and he lifted up his voice, and wept for the lad that was
dead. But still he waited there, till the crows and the Brahminee kites
should come to perform the last horrid rites; for to Parsee custom the
sepulture most becoming to men and most acceptable to God is in the
stomachs of the fowls of the air, in the craws of ghoulish vultures and
sacrilegious crows.

And presently there came a great Pondicherry eagle, sniffing the feast
from afar; and he came alone. Swiftly sailing, poised on silent wings,
he circled over Golgotha, circle within circle, circle below circle,
over the child sleeping naked, over the father watching veiled.

One moment he flutters, as for a foothold on the pinnacle of his
purpose; then

"Like a thunderbolt he falls."

Sitting solemnly on the breast of the dead boy, the "grim, ungainly,
gaunt, and ominous bird" peers with sidelong glance into his face,
gloating; and then--

Immediately my Parsee neighbor uprises in his place, throws aside his
veil, and, shouting, runs forward. The Pondicherry eagle soars screaming
to the clouds, and the sorrow-stricken Gheber bends over the dear
corpse. Is it Heaven or Hell? _the right eye or the left?_ Alas, the
left!

He beats his breast, he falls upon his knees, and cries with frantic
gestures to the setting Sun; but the sullen god only draws a cloud
before his face, and leaves his poor worshipper to despair. Then my
Parsee neighbor arises and girds up