And the old man retired hastily,--anxious to avoid further
converse about the painful event for which he felt himself to
have been unwittingly responsible.

(1) Perhaps this conversation may seem strange to the Western
reader; but it is true to life. The whole of the scene is
characteristically Japanese.
(2) The invocation Namu Amida Butsu! ("Hail to the Buddha
Amitabha!"),--repeated, as a prayer, for the sake of the dead.



III

Shinzaburo long remained stupefied with grief by the news of O-
Tsuyu's death. But as soon as he found himself again able to
think clearly, he inscribed the dead girl's name upon a mortuary
tablet, and placed the tablet in the Buddhist shrine of his
house, and set offerings before it, and recited prayers. Every
day thereafter he presented offerings, and repeated the Nembutsu;
and the memory of O-Tsuyu was never absent from his thought.

Nothing occurred to change the monotony of his solitude before
the time of the Bon,--the great Festival of the Dead,--which
begins upon the thirteenth day of the seventh month. Then he
decorated his house, and prepared everything for the festival;--
hanging out the lanterns that guide the returning spirits, and
setting the food of ghosts on the shoryodana, or Shelf of Souls.
And on the first evening of the Ban, after sun-down, he kindled a