"What a nice priest you are!" exclaimed the robber. "You kill men, and
jest about it!... But I am really in earnest. Here is my robe; and here is
the money;-- and let me have the head... What is the use of joking?"


"Take the thing," said Kwairyo. "I was not joking. The only joke -- if
there be any joke at all -- is that you are fool enough to pay good money
for a goblin's head." And Kwairyo, loudly laughing, went upon his way.



Thus the robber got the head and the koromo; and for some time he played
goblin-priest upon the highways. But, reaching the neighborhood of Suwa, he
there leaned the true story of the head; and he then became afraid that the
spirit of the Rokuro-Kubi might give him trouble. So he made up his mind to
take back the head to the place from which it had come, and to bury it with
its body. He found his way to the lonely cottage in the mountains of Kai;
but nobody was there, and he could not discover the body. Therefore he
buried the head by itself, in the grove behind the cottage; and he had a
tombstone set up over the grave; and he caused a Segaki-service to be
performed on behalf of the spirit of the Rokuro-Kubi. And that tombstone --
known as the Tombstone of the Rokuro-Kubi -- may be seen (at least so the
Japanese story-teller declares) even unto this day.




A DEAD SECRET