es to those he had known so well before.

Wondering what it can mean he walks quickly towards his old home. Even
that looks different, but a house stands on the spot, and he calls out:

"Father, I have just returned!" and he was about to enter, when he saw
a strange man coming out.

"Perhaps my parents have moved while I have been away, and have gone
somewhere else," was the fisherman's thought. Somehow he began to feel
strangely anxious, he could not tell why.

"Excuse me," said he to the man who was staring at him, "but till
within the last few days I have lived in this house. My name is
Urashima Taro. Where have my parents gone whom I left here?"

A very bewildered expression came over the face of the man, and, still
gazing intently on Urashima's face, he said:

"What? Are you Urashima Taro?"

"Yes," said the fisherman, "I am Urashima Taro!"

"Ha, ha!" laughed the man, "you must not make such jokes. It is true
that once upon a time a man called Urashima Taro did live in this
village, but that is a story three hundred years old. He could not
possibly be alive now!"

When Urashima heard these strange words he was frightened, and said:

"Please, please, you must not joke with me, I am greatly perplexed. I
am really Urashima Taro, and I certainly have not lived three hundred
years. Till four or five days ago I lived on this spot. Tell me what I
want to know without more joking, please."

But the man's face grew more and more grave, and he answered:

"You may or may not be Urashima Taro, I don't know. But the Urashima
Taro of whom I have heard is a man who lived three hundred years ago.
Perhaps you are his spirit come to revisit your old home?"

"Why do you mock me?" said Urashima. "I am no spirit! I am a living
man--do you not see my feet;" and "don-don," he stamped on the ground,
first with one foot and then with the other to show the man. (Japanese
ghosts have no feet.)

"But Urashima Taro lived three hundred years ago, that is all I know;
it is written in the village chronicles," persisted the man, who could
not believe what the fisherman said.

Urashima was lost in bewilderment and trouble. He stood looking all
around him, terribly puzzled, and, indeed, something in the appearance
of everything was different to what he remembered before he went away,
and the awful feeling came over him that what the man said was perhaps
true. He seemed to be in a strange dream. The few days he had spent in
the Sea K