Often and often, in his solitary walks, It[=o] revisited the village at Kotobikiyama, vaguely hoping to obtain another glimpse of the past.  But never again, by night or by day, was he able to find the rustic gate in the shadowed lane; never again could he perceive the figure of the little miya-dzukai, walking alone in the sunset-glow.

The village people, whom he questioned carefully, thought him bewitched.  No person of rank, they said, had ever dwelt in the settlement; and there had never been, in the neighborhood, any such garden as he described.  But there had once been a great Buddhist temple near the place of which he spoke; and some gravestones of the temple-cemetery were still to be seen.  It[=o] discovered the monuments in the middle of a dense thicket.  They were of an ancient Chinese form, and were covered with moss and lichens.  The characters that had been cut upon them could no longer be deciphered.

* * * * *

Of his adventure It[=o] spoke to no one.  But friends and kindred soon perceived a great change in his appearance and manner.  Day by day he seemed to become more pale and thin, though physicians declared that he had no bodily ailment; he looked like a ghost, and moved like a shadow.  Thoughtful and solitary he had always been, but now he appeared indifferent to everything which had formerly given him pleasure,—­even to those literary studies by means of which he might have hoped to win distinction.  To his mother—­who thought that marriage might quicken his former ambition, and revive his interest in life—­he said that he had made a vow to marry no living woman.  And the months dragged by.

At last came the Year of the Boar, and the season of autumn; but I to could no longer take the solitary walks that he loved.  He could not even rise from his bed.  His life was ebbing, though none could divine the cause; and he slept so deeply and so long that his sleep was often mistaken for death.

Out of such a sleep he was startled, one bright evening, by the voice of a child; and he saw at his bedside the little miya-dsukai who had guided him, ten years before, to the gate of the vanished garden.  She saluted him, and smiled, and said:  “I am bidden to tell you that you will be received to-night at [:O]hara, near Ky[=o]to, where the new home is, and that a kago has been sent for you.”  Then she disappeared.

It[=o] knew that he was being summoned away from the light of the sun; but the message so rejoiced him that he found strength to sit up and call his mother.  To her he then for the first time related the story of his bridal, and he showed her the ink-stone which had been given him.  He asked that it should be placed in his coffin,—­and then he died.

* * * * *

The ink-stone was buried with him.  But before the funeral ceremonies it was examined by experts, who said that it had been made in the period of J[=o]-an(1169 A.D.), and that it bore the seal-mark of an artist who had lived in the time of the Emperor Takakura.