relation to the life of our street was scarcely more
than that of a dog or a chicken; and when he finally disappeared, I did
not miss him. Months and months passed by before anything happened to
remind me of Riki.

"What has become of Riki?" I then asked the old woodcutter who supplies
our neighborhood with fuel. I remembered that Riki had often helped him
to carry his bundles.

"Riki-Baka?" answered the old man. "Ah, Riki is dead--poor fellow!...
Yes, he died nearly a year ago, very suddenly; the doctors said that he
had some disease of the brain. And there is a strange story now about
that poor Riki.

"When Riki died, his mother wrote his name, 'Riki-Baka,' in the palm of
his left hand,--putting 'Riki' in the Chinese character, and 'Baka' in
kana (1). And she repeated many prayers for him,--prayers that he might
be reborn into some more happy condition.

"Now, about three months ago, in the honorable residence of
Nanigashi-Sama (2), in Kojimachi (3), a boy was born with characters on
the palm of his left hand; and the characters were quite plain to
read,--'RIKI-BAKA'!

"So the people of that house knew that the birth must have happened in
answer to somebody's prayer; and they caused inquiry to be made
everywhere. At least a vegetable-seller brought word to them that there
used to be a simple lad, called Riki-Baka, living in the Ushigome
quarter, and that he had died during the last autumn; and they sent two
men-servants to look for the mother of Riki.

"Those servants found the mother of Riki, and told her what had
happened; and she was glad exceedingly--for that Nanigashi house is a
very rich and famous house. But the servants said that the family of
Nanigashi-Sama were very angry about the word 'Baka' on the child's
hand. 'And where is your Riki buried?' the servants asked. 'He is
buried in the cemetery of Zendoji,' she told them. 'Please to give us
some of the clay of his grave,' they requested.

"So she went with them to the temple Zendoji, and showed them Riki's
grave; and they took some of the grave-clay away with them, wrapped up
in a furoshiki [1].... They gave Riki's mother some money,--ten
yen."... (4)

"But what did they want with that clay?" I inquired.

"Well," the old man answered, "you know that it would not do to let the
child grow up with that name on his hand. And there is no other means
of removing characters that come in that way upon the body of a child:
you must rub the skin with c