followed in the mission of comforter. Did some
sister Gy fail to secure the love she sighed for?
Zee sought her out, and brought all the resources of
her lore, and all the consolations of her sympathy,
to bear upon a grief that so needs the solace of a
confidant. In the rare cases, when grave illness
seized upon childhood or youth, and the cases, less
rare, when, in the hardy and adventurous probation
of infants, some accident, attended with pain and
injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies and her sports,
and became the healer and nurse. Her favourite
flights were towards the extreme boundaries of the
domain where children were stationed on guard against
outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or the invasions
of devouring animals, so that she might warn them of
any peril which her knowledge detected or foresaw,
or be at hand if any harm had befallen. Nay,
even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements
there was a concurrent benevolence of purpose and
will. Did she learn any novelty in invention
that would be useful to the practitioner of some special
art or craft? she hastened to communicate and explain
it. Was some veteran sage of the College perplexed
and wearied with the toil of an abstruse study? she
would patiently devote herself to his aid, work out
details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful
smile, quicken his wit with her luminous suggestion,
be to him, as it were, his own good genius made visible
as the strengthener and inspirer. The same tenderness
she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have
often known her bring home some sick and wounded animal,
and tend and cherish it as a mother would tend and
cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I
sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my
window opened, I have watched her rising in the air
on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups
of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar
upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering
and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very
centre of innocent delight. When I have walked
with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the
city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar,
come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand,
or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical
whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend.
It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on
their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling
opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars.
These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched
by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame,
which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves
as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp,
if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights,
they have to traverse the dark. There are times,
when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of
face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could
scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth,
and bent my head before her as the vision of a being