light of a paper lantern. Until a late hour he continued to read and pray:
then he opened a little window in his little sleeping-room, to take a last
look at the landscape before lying down. The night was beautiful: there
was no cloud in the sky: there was no wind; and the strong moonlight threw
down sharp black shadows of foliage, and glittered on the dews of the
garden. Shrillings of crickets and bell-insects (3) made a musical tumult;
and the sound of the neighboring cascade deepened with the night. Kwairyo
felt thirsty as he listened to the noise of the water; and, remembering the
bamboo aqueduct at the rear of the house, he thought that he could go there
and get a drink without disturbing the sleeping household. Very gently he
pushed apart the sliding-screens that separated his room from the main
apartment; and he saw, by the light of the lantern, five recumbent bodies
-- without heads!


For one instant he stood bewildered,-- imagining a crime. But in another
moment he perceived that there was no blood, and that the headless necks
did not look as if they had been cut. Then he thought to himself:-- "Either
this is an illusion made by goblins, or I have been lured into the dwelling
of a Rokuro-Kubi... (4) In the book Soshinki (5) it is written that if one
find the body of a Rokuro-Kubi without its head, and remove the body to
another place, the head will never be able to join itself again to the
neck. And the book further says that when the head comes back and finds
that its body has been moved, it will strike itself upon the floor three
times,-- bounding like a ball,-- and will pant as in great fear, and
presently die. Now, if these be Rokuro-Kubi, they mean me no good;-- so I
shall be justified in following the instructions of the book."...


He seized the body of the aruji by the feet, pulled it to the window, and