e little _miya-dzukai_, walking alone in the sunset-glow.

The village people, whom he questioned carefully, thought him
bewitched. No person of rank, they said, had ever dwelt in the
settlement; and there had never been, in the neighborhood, any such
garden as he described. But there had once been a great Buddhist
temple near the place of which he spoke; and some gravestones of the
temple-cemetery were still to be seen. It[=o] discovered the monuments
in the middle of a dense thicket. They were of an ancient Chinese
form, and were covered with moss and lichens. The characters that had
been cut upon them could no longer be deciphered.

* * * * *

Of his adventure It[=o] spoke to no one. But friends and kindred soon
perceived a great change in his appearance and manner. Day by day he
seemed to become more pale and thin, though physicians declared that
he had no bodily ailment; he looked like a ghost, and moved like
a shadow. Thoughtful and solitary he had always been, but now he
appeared indifferent to everything which had formerly given him
pleasure,--even to those literary studies by means of which he
might have hoped to win distinction. To his mother--who thought that
marriage might quicken his former ambition, and revive his interest in
life--he said that he had made a vow to marry no living woman. And the
months dragged by.

At last came the Year of the Boar, and the season of autumn; but I to
could no longer take the solitary walks that he loved. He could not
even rise from his bed. His life was ebbing, though none could divine
the cause; and he slept so deeply and so long that his sleep was often
mistaken for death.

Out of such a sleep he was startled, one bright evening, by the voice
of a child; and he saw at his bedside the little _miya-dsukai_ who
had guided him, ten years before, to the gate of the vanished garden.
She saluted him, and smiled, and said: "I am bidden to tell you that
you will be received to-night at [:O]hara, near Ky[=o]to, where the
new home is, and that a _kago_ has been sent for you." Then she
disappeared.

It[=o] knew that he was being summoned away from the light of the sun;
but the message so rejoiced him that he found strength to sit up and
call his mother. To her he then for the first time related the story
of his bridal, and he showed her the ink-stone which had been given
him. He asked that it should be placed in his coffin,--and then he
died.