the wishes of his
family, and to accept a wife of his father's choosing. After his
marriage he continued to set offerings before the tablet of O-Tei; and
he never failed to remember her with affection. But by degrees her
image became dim in his memory,--like a dream that is hard to recall.
And the years went by.

During those years many misfortunes came upon him. He lost his parents
by death,--then his wife and his only child. So that he found himself
alone in the world. He abandoned his desolate home, and set out upon a
long journey in the hope of forgetting his sorrows.

One day, in the course of his travels, he arrived at Ikao,--a
mountain-village still famed for its thermal springs, and for the
beautiful scenery of its neighborhood. In the village-inn at which he
stopped, a young girl came to wait upon him; and, at the first sight of
her face, he felt his heart leap as it had never leaped before. So
strangely did she resemble O-Tei that he pinched himself to make sure
that he was not dreaming. As she went and came,--bringing fire and
food, or arranging the chamber of the guest,--her every attitude and
motion revived in him some gracious memory of the girl to whom he had
been pledged in his youth. He spoke to her; and she responded in a
soft, clear voice of which the sweetness saddened him with a sadness of
other days.

Then, in great wonder, he questioned her, saying:--

"Elder Sister (3), so much do you look like a person whom I knew long
ago, that I was startled when you first entered this room. Pardon me,
therefore, for asking what is your native place, and what is your name?"

Immediately,--and in the unforgotten voice of the dead,--she thus made
answer:--

"My name is O-Tei; and you are Nagao Chosei of Echigo, my promised
husband. Seventeen years ago, I died in Niigata: then you made in
writing a promise to marry me if ever I could come back to this world
in the body of a woman;--and you sealed that written promise with your
seal, and put it in the butsudan, beside the tablet inscribed with my
name. And therefore I came back."...

As she uttered these last words, she fell unconscious.

Nagao married her; and the marriage was a happy one. But at no time
afterwards could she remember what she had told him in answer to his
question at Ikao: neither could she remember anything of her previous
existence. The recollection of the former birth,--mysteriously kindled
in the moment of that meeting,--had ag