THE GUEBRE PRIEST. 
255 
emotion sustained him, and he cheered her in a calm 
tone, first breaking the silence, which had not before 
been interrupted by a human voice since they had 
been led from the tomb to the place of execution. 
They had occasionally conversed upon the vast supe- 
riority of the Christian over the heathen faith; she 
had therefore imbibed from her lover some notions of 
a Redeemer, although those notions were imperfect. 
She felt, however, a holy confidence that both were 
about to undergo a change for the better, and was 
therefore comparatively insensible to the terrors of 
death. 
When all was prepared for the consummation of 
this awful judgment, the lovely girl tenderly begged 
her father to embrace her he silenced her affect- 
ing appeal with a solemn, but obdurate malediction. 
Her head drooped as the curse issued deliberately from 
his lips, and a tear suffused her eye as she turned it 
slowly upon her companion. His was fixed upon her 
with a glance that quickly recalled her to a sense of 
the position in which she was at that moment stand- 
ing, and her face kindled with a lofty expression of 
resignation that seemed to bid defiance to the terrible 
array of death. 
A lighted torch was now placed within her grasp 
and that of the young Englishman ; but just as they 
were about to apply it to the fuel, a flash of lightning 
struck the stake to which they were both tied and 
shivered it in pieces. Two of the Parsees were struck 
dead ; and the father fell upon his knees in consterna- 
tion, imagining that the Guebres’ God had, in his 
wrath, elanced a stream of sacred fire from heaven 
