u were not deceived by me."

"What a nice priest you are!" exclaimed the robber. "You kill men, and
jest about it!... But I am really in earnest. Here is my robe; and here
is the money;--and let me have the head... What is the use of joking?"

"Take the thing," said Kwairyo. "I was not joking. The only joke--if
there be any joke at all--is that you are fool enough to pay good money
for a goblin's head." And Kwairyo, loudly laughing, went upon his way.

Thus the robber got the head and the koromo; and for some time he
played goblin-priest upon the highways. But, reaching the neighborhood
of Suwa, he there leaned the true story of the head; and he then became
afraid that the spirit of the Rokuro-Kubi might give him trouble. So he
made up his mind to take back the head to the place from which it had
come, and to bury it with its body. He found his way to the lonely
cottage in the mountains of Kai; but nobody was there, and he could not
discover the body. Therefore he buried the head by itself, in the grove
behind the cottage; and he had a tombstone set up over the grave; and
he caused a Segaki-service to be performed on behalf of the spirit of
the Rokuro-Kubi. And that tombstone--known as the Tombstone of the
Rokuro-Kubi--may be seen (at least so the Japanese story-teller
declares) even unto this day.

A DEAD SECRET

A long time ago, in the province of Tamba (1), there lived a rich
merchant named Inamuraya Gensuke. He had a daughter called O-Sono. As
she was very clever and pretty, he thought it would be a pity to let
her grow up with only such teaching as the country-teachers could give
her: so he sent her, in care of some trusty attendants, to Kyoto, that
she might be trained in the polite accomplishments taught to the ladies
of the capital. After she had thus been educated, she was married to a
friend of her father's family--a merchant named Nagaraya;--and she
lived happily with him for nearly four years. They had one child,--a
But O-Sono fell ill and died, in the fourth year after her marriage.

On the night after the funeral of O-Sono, her little son said that his
mamma had come back, and was in the room upstairs. She had smiled at
him, but would not talk to him: so he became afraid, and ran away. Then
some of the family went upstairs to the room which had been O-Sono's;
and they were startled to see, by the light of a small lamp which had
been kindled before a shrine in that room, the figure of the dea