o give the
beast trouble, and tried to retract what he had said. "Posthumous
honours, after all, are the wish of ordinary men. I, who am a priest,
ought not to entertain such thoughts, or to want money; so pray pay no
attention to what I have said;" and the badger, feigning assent to
what the priest had impressed upon it, returned to the hills as usual.

From that time forth the badger came no more to the hut. The priest
thought this very strange, but imagined either that the badger stayed
away because it did not like to come without the money, or that it had
been killed in an attempt to steal it; and he blamed himself for
having added to his sins for no purpose, repenting when it was too
late: persuaded, however, that the badger must have been killed, he
passed his time in putting up prayers upon prayers for it.

After three years had gone by, one night the old man heard a voice
near his door calling out, "Your reverence! your reverence!"

As the voice was like that of the badger, he jumped up as soon as he
heard it, and ran out to open the door; and there, sure enough, was
the badger. The priest, in great delight, cried out, "And so you are
safe and sound, after all! Why have you been so long without coming
here? I have been expecting you anxiously this long while."

So the badger came into the hut, and said, "If the money which you
required had been for unlawful purposes, I could easily have procured
as much as ever you might have wanted; but when I heard that it was to
be offered to a temple for masses for your soul, I thought that, if I
were to steal the hidden treasure of some other man, you could not
apply to a sacred purpose money which had been obtained at the expense
of his sorrow. So I went to the island of Sado,[81] and gathering the
sand and earth which had been cast away as worthless by the miners,
fused it afresh in the fire; and at this work I spent months and
days." As the badger finished speaking, the priest looked at the money
which it had produced, and sure enough he saw that it was bright and
new and clean; so he took the money, and received it respectfully,
raising it to his head.

[Footnote 81: An island on the west coast of Japan, famous for its
gold mines.]

"And so you have had all this toil and labour on account of a foolish
speech of mine? I have obtained my heart's desire, and am truly
thankful."

As he was thanking the badger with great politeness and ceremony, the
beast said, "I