[Illustration]
In the Toyama district of the province of Bishū, there formerly lived a
young farmer and his wife. Their farm was situated in a lonely place,
among the hills.
One night the wife dreamed that her father-in-law, who had died some
years before, came to her and said, "_To-morrow I shall be in great
danger: try to save me if you can!_" In the morning she told this to
her husband; and they talked about the dream. Both imagined that the
dead man wanted something; but neither could imagine what the words of
the vision signified.
After breakfast, the husband went to the fields; but the wife remained
at her loom. Presently she was startled by a great shouting outside.
She went to the door, and saw the Jitō[1] of the district, with a
hunting party, approaching the farm. While she stood watching them, a
pheasant ran by her into the house; and she suddenly remembered her
dream. "Perhaps it is my father-in-law," she thought to herself;--"I
must try to save it!" Then, hurrying in after the bird,--a fine male
pheasant,--she caught it without any difficulty, put it into the empty
rice-pot, and covered the pot with the lid.
A moment later some of the Jitō's followers entered, and asked her
whether she had seen a pheasant. She answered boldly that she had not;
but one of the hunters declared that he had seen the bird run into
the house. So the party searched for it, peeping into every nook and
corner; but nobody thought of looking into the rice-pot. After looking
everywhere else to no purpose, the men decided that the bird must have
escaped through some hole; and they went away.
*
When the farmer came home his wife told him about the pheasant, which
she had left in the rice-pot, so that he might see it. "When I caught
it," she said, "it did not struggle in the least; and it remained very
quiet in the pot. I really think that it is father-in-law." The farmer
went to the pot, lifted the lid, and took out the bird. It remained
still in his hands, as if tame, and looked at him as if accustomed to
his presence. One of its eyes was blind. "Father was blind of one eye,"
the farmer said,--"the right eye; and the right eye of this bird is
blind. Really, I think it is father. See! it looks at us just as father
used to do!... Poor father must have thought to himself, '_Now that I
am a bird, better to give my body to my children for food than to let
the hunters have it._'... And that explains your dream of last night,"
he added,--turning to his wife with an evil smile as he wrung the
pheasant's neck.