Then he saw that the leaders of the procession were followed by others who carried a couch of mother-o'-pearl resting on their shoulders, that on the couch reposed a pale sweet-looking youth dressed in silk clothes of a delicate rose-colour.

He also wore crimson shoes, and a tight-fitting apple-green skull cap, which made his head look very small.

His eyes were ruby-red, and he had a long slender nose like a snipe's bill, only broad and flattened at the tip.

And then Martin saw that he was wounded, for he had one white hand pressed to his side and it was stained with blood, and drops of blood were trickling through his fingers.
He was troubled at the sight, and he gazed at him, and listened to the words of that solemn song the old men were singing but could not understand them.

Not because he was a child, for no person, however aged and wise and filled with all learning he might be, could have understood that strange song about Wonderful Life and Wonderful Death.
Yet there was something in it too which any one who heard it, man or child, could understand; and he understood it, and it went into his heart to make it so heavy and sad that he could have put his little face down on the ground and cried as he had never cried before.