that once upon a time a man called Urashima Taro did live in this
village, but that is a story three hundred years old. He could not
possibly be alive now!"

When Urashima heard these strange words he was frightened, and said:

"Please, please, you must not joke with me, I am greatly perplexed.
I am really Urashima Taro, and I certainly have not lived three
hundred years. Till four or five days ago I lived on this spot. Tell
me what I want to know without more joking, please."

But the man's face grew more and more grave, and he answered:

"You may or may not be Urashima Taro, I don't know. But the Urashima
Taro of whom I have heard is a man who lived three hundred years
ago. Perhaps you are his spirit come to revisit your old home?"

"Why do you mock me?" said Urashima. "I am no spirit! I am a living
man--do you not see my feet;" and "don-don," he stamped on the
ground, first with one foot and then with the other to show the man.
(Japanese ghosts have no feet.)

"But Urashima Taro lived three hundred years ago, that is all I
know; it is written in the village chronicles, "persisted the man,
who could not believe what the fisherman said.

Urashima was lost in bewilderment and trouble. He stood looking all
around him, terribly puzzled, and, indeed, something in the
appearance of everything was different to what he remembered before
he went away, and the awful feeling came over him that what the man