Night after night the shadows came at the Hour of the Ox; and nightly
Shinzaburō heard the weeping of O-Tsuyu. Yet he believed himself
saved,—little imagining that his doom had already been decided by the
character of his dependents.
Tomozō had promised Yusai never to speak to any other person—not even
to O-Miné—of the strange events that were taking place. But Tomozō was
not long suffered by the haunters to rest in peace. Night after night
O-Yoné entered into his dwelling, and roused him from his sleep, and
asked him to remove the _o-fuda_ placed over one very small window at
the back of his master’s house. And Tomozō, out of fear, as often
promised her to take away the _o-fuda_ before the next sundown; but
never by day could he make up his mind to remove it,—believing that
evil was intended to Shinzaburō. At last, in a night of storm, O-Yoné
startled him from slumber with a cry of reproach, and stooped above his
pillow, and said to him: “Have a care how you trifle with us! If, by
to-morrow night, you do not take away that text, you shall learn how I
can hate!” And she made her face so frightful as she spoke that Tomozō
nearly died of terror.
O-Miné, the wife of Tomozō, had never till then known of these visits:
even to her husband they had seemed like bad dreams. But on this
particular night it chanced that, waking suddenly, she heard the voice
of a woman talking to Tomozō. Almost in the same moment the talk-ing
ceased; and when O-Miné looked about her, she saw, by the light of the
night-lamp, only her husband,—shuddering and white with fear. The
stranger was gone; the doors were fast: it seemed impossible that
anybody could have entered. Nevertheless the jealousy of the wife had
been aroused; and she began to chide and to question Tomozō in such a
manner that he thought himself obliged to betray the secret, and to
explain the terrible dilemma in which he had been placed.
Then the passion of O-Miné yielded to wonder and alarm; but she was a
subtle woman, and she devised immediately a plan to save her husband by
the sacrifice of her master. And she gave Tomozō a cunning
counsel,—telling him to make conditions with the dead.
They came again on the following night at the Hour of the Ox; and
O-Miné hid herself on hearing the sound of their coming,—_karan-koron,
karan-koron!_ But Tomozō went out to meet them in the dark, and even
found courage to say to them what his wife had told him to say:—
“It is true that I deserve your blame;—but I had no wish to cause you
anger. The reason that the _o-fuda_ has not been taken away is that my
wife and I are able to live only by the help of Hagiwara Sama, and that
we cannot expose him to any danger without bringing misfortune upon
ourselves. But if we could obtain the sum of a hundred _ryō_ in gold,
we should be able to please you, because we should then need no help
from anybody. Therefore if you will give us a hundred _ryō_, I can take
the _o-fuda_ away without being afraid of losing our only means of
support.”
When he had uttered these words, O-Yoné and O-Tsuyu looked at each
other in silence for a moment. Then O-Yoné said:—
“Mistress, I told you that it was not right to trouble this man, —as we
have no just cause of ill will against him. But it is certainly useless
to fret yourself about Hagiwara Sama, because his heart has changed
towards you. Now once again, my dear young lady, let me beg you not to
think any more about him!”