him to a
knowledge of the truth by the sacrifice of one of our own lives.
To-night is fortunately moonless; and if I put on white garments and go
to the neighborhood of the bay, he will take me for a stork and shoot me
dead. Do you continue to live and tend our father with all the services
of filial piety." Thus she spake, her eyes dimmed with the rolling
tears. But the younger sister, with many sobs, exclaimed: "For you, my
sister, for you is it to receive the inheritance of this house. So do
you condescend to be the one to live, and to practise filial devotion to
our father, while I will offer up my life."

Thus did each strive for death. The elder one, without more words,
seizing a white garment rushed out of the house. The younger one,
unwilling to cede to her the place of honor, putting on a white gown
also, followed in her track to the shore of the bay. There, making her
way to her among the rushes, she continued the dispute as to which of
the two should be the one to die.

Meanwhile the father, peering around him in the darkness, saw something
white. Taking it for the storks, he aimed at the spot with his gun, and
did not miss his shot, for it pierced through the ribs of the elder of
the two girls. The younger, helpless in her grief, bent over her
sister's body. The father, not dreaming of what he was about, and
astonished to find that his having shot one of the storks did not make
the other fly away, discharged another shot at the remaining white
figure. Lamentable to relate, he hit his second daughter as he had the
first. She fell, pierced through the chest, and was laid on the same
grassy pillow as her sister.

The father, pleased with his success, came up to the rushes to look for
his game. But what! no storks, alas! alas! No, only his two daughters!
Filled with consternation, he asked what it all meant. The girls,
breathing with difficulty, told him that their resolve had been to show
him the crime of taking life, and thus respectfully to cause him to
desist therefrom. They expired before they had time to say more.

The father was filled with sorrow and remorse. He took the two corpses
home on his back. As there was now no help for what was done, he placed
them reverently on a wood stack, and there they burnt, making smoke to
the blowing wind. From that hour he was a converted man. He built
himself a small cell of branches of trees, near the village bridge.
Placing therein the memorial tablets of his two