the result of knowing that there must happen to you, within the
next two months, some terrible misfortune which you cannot
possibly provide against!

He was already an old man when I first saw him in Izumo,--
certainly more than sixty years of age, but looking very much
younger. Afterwards I met him in Osaka, in Kyoto, and in Kobe.
More than once I tried to persuade him to pass the colder months
of the winter-season under my roof,--for he possessed an
extraordinary knowledge of traditions, and could have been of
inestimable service to me in a literary way. But partly because
the habit of wandering had become with him a second nature, and
partly because of a love of independence as savage as a gipsy's,
I was never able to keep him with me for more than two days at a
time.

Every year he used to come to Tokyo,--usually in the latter part
of autumn. Then, for several weeks, he would flit about the city,
from district to district, and vanish again. But during these
fugitive trips he never failed to visit me; bringing welcome news
of Izumo people and places,--bringing also some queer little
present, generally of a religious kind, from some famous place of
pilgrimage. On these occasions I could get a few hours' chat with
him. Sometimes the talk was of strange things seen or heard
during his recent journey; sometimes it turned upon old legends
or beliefs; sometimes it was about fortune-telling. The last time
we met he told me of an exact Chinese science of divination which
he regretted never having been able to learn.

"Any one learned in that science," he said, "would be able, for