“Dear me! whilst we have been gossiping, the macaroni has been getting cold.  Let us put it all together and warm it up again.  As no one has put his lips to his bowl yet, it will all be clean; so none need be wasted.”  And with these words he took the macaroni that was in the three bowls, and, pouring it altogether into an iron pot, boiled it up again.  This time Jiuyemon served out the food himself, and, setting it before his wife and the wrestler, said—­

“There! make haste and eat it up before it gets cold.”

Jiuyemon, of course, did not eat any of the mess; and the would-be murderers, knowing that sufficient poison had been originally put into Jiuyemon’s bowl to kill them all three, and that now the macaroni, having been well mixed up, would all be poisoned, were quite taken aback, and did not know what to do.

“Come! make haste, or it will be quite cold.  You said you liked it, so I sent to buy it on purpose.  O Hiyaku! come and make a hearty meal.  I will eat some presently.”

At this the pair looked very foolish, and knew not what to answer; at last the wrestler got up and said—­

“I do not feel quite well.  I must beg to take my leave; and, if you will allow me, I will come and accept your hospitality to-morrow instead.”

“Dear me!  I am sorry to hear you are not well.  However, O Hiyaku, there will be all the more macaroni for you.”

As for O Hiyaku, she put a bold face upon the matter, and replied that she had supped already, and had no appetite for any more.

Then Jiuyemon, looking at them both with a scornful smile, said—­

“It seems that you, neither of you, care to eat this macaroni; however, as you, Takasegawa, are unwell, I will give you some excellent medicine;” and going to the cupboard, he drew out the letter, and laid it before the wrestler.  When O Hiyaku and the wrestler saw that their wicked schemes had been brought to light, they were struck dumb with shame.

Takasegawa, seeing that denial was useless, drew his dirk and cut at Jiuyemon; but he, being nimble and quick, dived under the wrestler’s arm, and seizing his right hand from behind, tightened his grasp upon it until it became numbed, and the dirk fell to the ground; for, powerful man as the wrestler was, he was no match for Jiuyemon, who held him in so fast a grip that he could not move.  Then Jiuyemon took the dirk which had fallen to the ground, and said:—­

“Oh!  I thought that you, being a wrestler, would at least be a strong man, and that there would be some pleasure in fighting you; but I see that you are but a poor feckless creature, after all.  It would have defiled my sword to have killed such an ungrateful hound with it; but luckily here is your own dirk, and I will slay you with that.”

Takasegawa struggled to escape, but in vain; and O Hiyaku, seizing a large kitchen knife, attacked Jiuyemon; but he, furious, kicked her in the loins so violently that she fell powerless, then brandishing the dirk, he cleft the wrestler from the shoulder down to the nipple of his breast, and the big man fell in his agony.  O Hiyaku, seeing this, tried to fly; but Jiuyemon, seizing her by the hair of the head, stabbed her in the bosom, and, placing her by her lover’s side, gave her the death-blow.