thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the
gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but
he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the
old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched
Mosaku's face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead...


By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his station,
a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the
frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to
himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of
that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man's
death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white. As soon
as he got well again, he returned to his calling,-- going alone every
morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of
wood, which his mother helped him to sell.



One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way
home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road. She
was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi's
greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird.
Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her
name was O-Yuki [2]; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that
she was going to Yedo (2), where she happened to have some poor relations,
who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Minokichi soon felt
charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the
handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed;
and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she