So quaking with fear he crept back at last and sat with his head on his knees and his teeth chattering looking at the recumbent motionless figure and waiting for dawn.
When daylight came he went out and the neighbours came willingly enough then, in a never-ending stream to stare and make comments. He mourned loudly, beating himself on the breast and looking very miserable, death being an important and ceremonious event and being so considered by all. As there were no relatives, the headman of the locality came and made a rude inventory, and then reported the case to the coffin-guild who prepared a suitable coffin and sent two men with lime to pack the corpse. All the children of the neighbourhood stood in a crowd together at the door, watching and trying to see every movement, for a burial is like a marriage and never fails to awaken interest, the one being the ending of life, just as the other is its procreation.
For a day or so things remained like that with the coffin in the hut. Then when everything was in order, they dressed him in coarse white mourner's cloth and placed a cap of the same material on his head, and the coffin was lifted up by four men on carrier's poles; and preceded by a fellow blacksmith, who carried paper money to be burnt in imitation shoes of silver (such as the dead man had never dreamed of in his life) and followed by the mourning boy, the coffin was carried to the temple of the locality, pending formal disposal.
CHAPTER IX
This humble affair settled, the elders of neighbourhood gathered to decide what should become of the boy and how the debt which had been incurred for the burial and the sickness should be met. The amount realized by the few effects left was barely sufficient to pay one half, and it was necessary by some means to find security for the balance. The boy was the last unliquidated asset.
He had been given shelter in a house near by; and when he heard that they were debating the question of apprenticing him to a big foundry just inside the city gate so that his work might liquidate the debt, he became alarmed.
After much silent cogitation he felt his belt, and finding a coin or two still left, he decided to have his destiny settled once and for all. Slipping quietly down the street, he came to a grave old man seated at a table by the roadside who cast horoscopes.
Without a second's hesitation he placed his money on the table; and sat down obediently on the bare wooden bench to learn his fate.
Every Chinese is possessed of eight characters—four of the Ten Heavenly Stems and four of the Twelve Earthly Branches; and it is by means of these, combined with the Five Elements, that the future may be known. By indicating the year, month, date and hour of birth, which are taught to children at a very early age, the group of eight characters is assembled: then there remains the question of discovering which of the Five Elements, that is metal, wood, water, fire or earth, is to dominate the group and how the interpretation is to be read. The most skilled use the Book of Changes, which was in common use some thirty centuries ago, and by this method see clearly into some scores of years. But there are common fellows who work as well on a simpler system.