At length, undone by such ceaseless vexation, Tokubei fell ill, and kept muttering, “Oh, misery! misery!—­the wandering priest is coming to torture me!” Hearing his moans and the disturbance he made, the people in the house fancied he was mad, and called in a physician, who prescribed for him.  But neither pill nor potion could cure Tokubei, whose strange frenzy soon became the talk of the whole neighbourhood.

Now it chanced that the story reached the ears of a certain wandering priest who lodged in the next street.  When he heard the particulars, this priest gravely shook his head, as though he knew all about it, and sent a friend to Tokubei’s house to say that a wandering priest, dwelling hard by, had heard of his illness, and, were it never so grievous, would undertake to heal it by means of his prayers; and Tokubei’s wife, driven half wild by her husband’s sickness, lost not a moment in sending for the priest, and taking him into the sick man’s room.

But no sooner did Tokubei see the priest than he yelled out, “Help! help!  Here is the wandering priest come to torment me again.  Forgive! forgive!” and hiding his head under the coverlet, he lay quivering all over.  Then the priest turned all present out of the room, put his mouth to the affrighted man’s ear, and whispered—­

“Three years ago, at the Kuana ferry, you flung me into the water; and well you remember it.”

But Tokubei was speechless, and could only quake with fear.

“Happily,” continued the priest, “I had learned to swim and to dive as a boy; so I reached the shore, and, after wandering through many provinces, succeeded in setting up a bronze figure to Buddha, thus fulfilling the wish of my heart.  On my journey homewards, I took a lodging in the next street, and there heard of your marvellous ailment.  Thinking I could divine its cause, I came to see you, and am glad to find I was not mistaken.  You have done a hateful deed; but am I not a priest, and have I not forsaken the things of this world? and would it not ill become me to bear malice?  Repent, therefore, and abandon your evil ways.  To see you do so I should esteem the height of happiness.  Be of good cheer, now, and look me in the face, and you will see that I am really a living man, and no vengeful goblin come to torment you.”

Seeing he had no ghost to deal with, and overwhelmed by the priest’s kindness, Tokubei burst into tears, and answered, “Indeed, indeed, I don’t know what to say.  In a fit of madness I was tempted to kill and rob you.  Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim’s vengeance would some day overtake me.  Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I beheld your spirit, and from that time forth fell ill.  But how you managed to escape, and are still alive, is more than I can understand.”

“A guilty man,” said the priest, with a smile, “shudders at the rustling of the wind or the chattering of a stork’s beak:  a murderer’s conscience preys upon his mind till he sees what is not.  Poverty drives a man to crimes which he repents of in his wealth.  How true is the doctrine of Moshi,[73] that the heart of man, pure by nature, is corrupted by circumstances.”