been turned into potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at
all angles out of the perpendicular, tablets made illegible by
scurf, empty pedestals, shattered water-tanks, and statues of
Buddhas without heads or hands. Recent rains had soaked the black
soil,--leaving here and there small pools of slime about which
swarms of tiny frogs were hopping. Everything--excepting the
potato-patches--seemed to have been neglected for years. In a
shed just within the gate, we observed a woman cooking; and my
companion presumed to ask her if she knew anything about the
tombs described in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern.

"Ah! the tombs of O-Tsuyu and O-Yone?" she responded, smiling;--"
you will find them near the end of the first row at the back of
the temple--next to the statue of Jizo."

Surprises of this kind I had met with elsewhere in Japan.

We picked our way between the rain-pools and between the green
ridges of young potatoes,--whose roots were doubtless feeding on
the sub-stance of many another O-Tsuyu and O-Yone;--and we
reached at last two lichen-eaten tombs of which the inscriptions
seemed almost obliterated. Beside the larger tomb was a statue of
Jizo, with a broken nose.

"The characters are not easy to make out," said my friend--"but
wait!".... He drew from his sleeve a sheet of soft white paper,
laid it over the inscription, and began to rub the paper with a
lump of clay. As he did so, the characters appeared in white on
the blackened surface.