believed would be of service to you. Here is the book;--please to
accept it.'

"Shoko Setsu was not less delighted than surprised; for the book
was a manuscript of the rarest and most precious kind,--
containing all the secrets of the science of divination. After
having thanked the young men, and properly expressed his regret
for the death of their teacher, he went back to his hut, and
there immediately proceeded to test the worth of the book by
consulting its pages in regard to his own fortune. The book
suggested to him that on the south side of his dwelling, at a
particular spot near one corner of the hut, great luck awaited
him. He dug at the place indicated, and found a jar containing
gold enough to make him a very wealthy man."

***

My old acquaintance left this world as lonesomely as he had lived
in it. Last winter, while crossing a mountain-range, he was
overtaken by a snowstorm, and lost his way. Many days later he
was found standing erect at the foot of a pine, with his little
pack strapped to his shoulders: a statue of ice--arms folded and
eyes closed as in meditation. Probably, while waiting for the
storm to pass, he had yielded to the drowsiness of cold, and the
drift had risen over him as he slept. Hearing of this strange
death I remembered the old Japanese saying,--Uranaiya minouye
shiradzu: "The fortune-teller knows not his own fate."