“Oh, Master Chokichi, such a terrible thing has happened!  Pray, let me tell you all about it.”

“Indeed! what can it be?”

“Oh! sir,” answered Kihachi, pretending to wipe away his tears, “my daughter O Koyo, mourning over her separation from my lord Genzaburo, at first refused all sustenance, and remained nursing her sorrows until, last night, her woman’s heart failing to bear up against her great grief, she drowned herself in the river, leaving behind her a paper on which she had written her intention.”

When Chokichi heard this, he was thunderstruck, and exclaimed, “Can this really be true!  And when I think that it was I who first introduced her to my lord, I am ashamed to look you in the face.”

“Oh, say not so:  misfortunes are the punishment due for our misdeeds in a former state of existence.  I bear you no ill-will.  This money which I hold in my hand was my daughter’s; and in her last instructions she wrote to beg that it might be given, after her death, to you, through whose intervention she became allied with a nobleman:  so please accept it as my daughter’s legacy to you;” and as he spoke, he offered him three riyos.

“You amaze me!” replied the other.  “How could I, above all men, who have so much to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you, accept this money?”

“Nay; it was my dead daughter’s wish.  But since you reproach yourself in the matter when you think of her, I will beg you to put up a prayer and to cause masses to be said for her.”

At last, Chokichi, after much persuasion, and greatly to his own distress, was obliged to accept the money; and when Kihachi had carried out all Sazen’s instructions, he returned home, laughing in his sleeve.

Chokichi was sorely grieved to hear of O Koyo’s death, and remained thinking over the sad news; when all of a sudden looking about him, he saw something like a letter lying on the spot where Kihachi had been sitting, so he picked it up and read it; and, as luck would have it, it was the very letter which contained Sazen’s instructions to Kihachi, and in which the whole story which had just affected him so much was made up.  When he perceived the trick that had been played upon him, he was very angry, and exclaimed, “To think that I should have been so hoaxed by that hateful old dotard, and such a fellow as Sazen!  And Genzaburo, too!—­out of gratitude for the favours which I had received from him in old days, I faithfully gave him good advice, and all in vain.  Well, they’ve gulled me once; but I’ll be even with them yet, and hinder their game before it is played out!” And so he worked himself up into a fury, and went off secretly to prowl about Sazen’s house to watch for O Koyo, determined to pay off Genzaburo and Sazen for their conduct to him.

In the meanwhile Sazen, who did not for a moment suspect what had happened, when the day which had been fixed upon by him and Genzaburo arrived, made O Koyo put on her best clothes, smartened up his house, and got ready a feast against Genzaburo’s arrival.  The latter came punctually to his time, and, going in at once, said to the fortune-teller, “Well, have you succeeded in the commission with which I entrusted you?”