e, and
answered, smiling, "Well, Master Chokichi, you're a fine fellow, and I
admire your spirit. You shall have the hundred riyos you ask for; but,
as I have not so much money by me at present, I will go to Genzaburo's
house and fetch it. It's getting dark now, but it's not very late; so
I'll trouble you to come with me, and then I can give you the money
to-night."

Chokichi consenting to this, the pair left the house together.

Now Sazen, who as a Ronin wore a long dirk in his girdle, kept looking
out for a moment when Chokichi should be off his guard, in order to
kill him; but Chokichi kept his eyes open, and did not give Sazen a
chance. At last Chokichi, as ill-luck would have it, stumbled against
a stone and fell; and Sazen, profiting by the chance, drew his dirk
and stabbed him in the side; and as Chokichi, taken by surprise, tried
to get up, he cut him severely over the head, until at last he fell
dead. Sazen then looking around him, and seeing, to his great delight,
that there was no one near, returned home. The following day,
Chokichi's body was found by the police; and when they examined it,
they found nothing upon it save a paper, which they read, and which
proved to be the very letter which Sazen had sent to Kihachi, and
which Chokichi had picked up. The matter was immediately reported to
the governor, and, Sazen having been summoned, an investigation was
held. Sazen, cunning and bold murderer as he was, lost his
self-possession when he saw what a fool he had been not to get back
from Chokichi the letter which he had written, and, when he was put to
a rigid examination under torture, confessed that he had hidden O
Koyo at Genzaburo's instigation, and then killed Chokichi, who had
found out the secret. Upon this the governor, after consulting about
Genzaburo's case, decided that, as he had disgraced his position as a
Hatamoto by contracting an alliance with the daughter of an Eta, his
property should be confiscated, his family blotted out, and himself
banished. As for Kihachi, the Eta chief, and his daughter O Koyo, they
were handed over for punishment to the chief of the Etas, and by him
they too were banished; while Sazen, against whom the murder of
Chokichi had been fully proved, was executed according to law.

NOTE

At Asakusa, in Yedo, there lives a man called Danzayemon, the chief of
the Etas. This man traces his pedigree back to Minamoto no Yoritomo,
who founded the Shogunate in the year A