The old Dustoor rose at once, as if pleased at our request, and with great alacrity led the way through a long narrow passage and up another old wooden staircase into a small chamber open to the sky by a curious contrivance, a sort of trapdoor, which was let down in rainy weather. There was a bench in one corner of this room; in the middle a circular table which revolved on a pivot, painted with curious hieroglyphics, and beside it a three-legged stool. As soon as we had taken our seats on the bench, the Dustoor drew out from under the table a board chequered black and red and a piece of chalk, and, taking the dim horn lantern that stood in a niche in the wall, set it on the table. This done, he turned to me and questioned me very closely in Hindostanee about the day, year, hour, and almost moment, of my birth. All such questions as I had it in my power to reply to he put down in what seemed to me signs and figures in one of the squares on his peculiar black and red board. This was a work of some time, for every now and then he seemed doubtful of his operations, rubbing out and replacing the signs and figures in new squares. When he had scrawled on the board to his satisfaction he began to compare it with the hieroglyphics on his revolving table, deciphering and studying the stars on each of his tablets with the utmost care. He then turned up his wan face and began to gaze alternately at the bit of sky seen through the open trapdoor and to examine the strange hieroglyphics on the table. The stars presiding at my birth were evidently unpropitious. He foretold for me many deaths among relations and friends, long and cruel separations by strange seas and oceans being placed between my friends and me; softening it off, however, by predicting a long life, a happy old age, and a numerous progeny of grand- and great-grandchildren; which, indeed, are the chief sources of happiness in the Parsee household. He then foretold my husband's future, which was even less auspicious, saying that a great shadow of one of the planets would cross his path in middle life, which if he survived he would live to a good old age, etc., etc. It was not what the old astrologer and Fire-priest said so much as his perfect faith in his own rendering of the position of the stars that most impressed me. The floating locks of gray hair, the serious brow, the deep, thoughtful, contemplative look on that face, were all very striking: his head full of the mystery of the stars and his heart ever revolving the secret destiny of human life were as strange and marked as any of the many lives whose future he believed he could so easily decipher.