eling dull and lonely, he began musing over all kinds of
things, when on a sudden the deed of murder and theft, done so long
ago, vividly recurred to his memory, and he thought to himself, "Here
am I, grown rich and fat on the money I wantonly stole. Since then,
all has gone well with me; yet, had I not been poor, I had never
turned assassin nor thief. Woe betide me! what a pity it was!" and as
he was revolving the matter in his mind, a feeling of remorse came
over him, in spite of all he could do. While his conscience thus smote
him, he suddenly, to his utter amazement, beheld the faint outline of
a man standing near a fir-tree in the garden: on looking more
attentively, he perceived that the man's whole body was thin and worn
and the eyes sunken and dim; and in the poor ghost that was before him
he recognized the very priest whom he had thrown into the sea at
Kuana. Chilled with horror, he looked again, and saw that the priest
was smiling in scorn. He would have fled into the house, but the ghost
stretched forth its withered arm, and, clutching the back of his neck,
scowled at him with a vindictive glare, and a hideous ghastliness of
mien, so unspeakably awful that any ordinary man would have swooned
with fear. But Tokubei, tradesman though he was, had once been a
soldier, and was not easily matched for daring; so he shook off the
ghost, and, leaping into the room for his dirk, laid about him boldly
enough; but, strike as he would, the spirit, fading into the air,
eluded his blows, and suddenly reappeared only to vanish again: and
from that time forth Tokubei knew no rest, and was haunted night and
day.

At length, undone by such ceaseless vexation, Tokubei fell ill, and
kept muttering, "Oh, misery! misery!--the wandering priest is coming
to torture me!" Hearing his moans and the disturbance he made, the
people in the house fancied he was mad, and called in a physician, who
prescribed for him. But neither pill nor potion could cure Tokubei,
whose strange frenzy soon became the talk of the whole neighbourhood.

Now it chanced that the story reached the ears of a certain wandering
priest who lodged in the next street. When he heard the particulars,
this priest gravely shook his head, as though he knew all about it,
and sent a friend to Tokubei's house to say that a wandering priest,
dwelling hard by, had heard of his illness, and, were it never so
grievous, would undertake to heal it by means of his prayers; and
Tokub