an's last hours.

One sultry afternoon, while the widow and her son were watching at his
bedside, Takahama fell asleep. At the same moment a very large white
butterfly entered the room, and perched upon the sick man's pillow. The
nephew drove it away with a fan; but it returned immediately to the
pillow, and was again driven away, only to come back a third time.
Then the nephew chased it into the garden, and across the garden,
through an open gate, into the cemetery of the neighboring temple. But
it continued to flutter before him as if unwilling to be driven
further, and acted so queerly that he began to wonder whether it was
really a butterfly, or a ma [16]. He again chased it, and followed it
far into the cemetery, until he saw it fly against a tomb,--a woman's
tomb. There it unaccountably disappeared; and he searched for it in
vain. He then examined the monument. It bore the personal name "Akiko,"
(3) together with an unfamiliar family name, and an inscription stating
that Akiko had died at the age of eighteen. Apparently the tomb had
been erected about fifty years previously: moss had begun to gather
upon it. But it had been well cared for: there were fresh flowers
before it; and the water-tank had recently been filled.

On returning to the sick room, the young man was shocked by the
announcement that his uncle had ceased to breathe. Death had come to
the sleeper painlessly; and the dead face smiled.

The young man told his mother of what he had seen in the cemetery.

"Ah!" exclaimed the widow, "then it must have been Akiko!"...

"But who was Akiko, mother?" the nephew asked.

The widow answered:--

"When your good uncle was young he was betrothed to a charming girl
called Akiko, the daughter of a neighbor. Akiko died of consumption,
only a little before the day appointed for the wedding; and her
promised husband sorrowed greatly. After Akiko had been buried, he made
a vow never to marry; and he built this little house beside the
cemetery, so that he might be always near her grave. All this happened
more than fifty years ago. And every day of those fifty years--winter
and summer alike--your uncle went to the cemetery, and prayed at the
grave, and swept the tomb, and set offerings before it. But he did not
like to have any mention made of the matter; and he never spoke of
it... So, at last, Akiko came for him: the white butterfly was her
soul."

IV

I had almost forgotten to mention an ancient Japanese