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Then I could question it about Kane-uji, either by word of mouth or in writing." When day dawned above the neighboring misty mountains, Kohagi went away to get an inkstone and a brush; and she soon returned with these to the place where the cart was. Then, with the brush, she wrote, below the inscription upon the wooden tablet attached to the breast of the gaki-ami, these words:
But Kohagi said to him: "Lo, master! the hens go to their nests when the weather becomes cold, end the little birds hie to the deep forest. Even so do men in time of misfortune flee to the shelter of benevolence. "Surely it is because you are known as a kindly man that the gaki-ami rested a while outside the fence of this house.
But Terute besought her husband to spare the man's life, and so fulfilled the promise she had long before made to Chobei, that she would give even her own life, if necessary, for her master and mistress, on condition of being allowed five days' freedom to draw the cart of the gaki-ami.
Then she bade the gaki-ami farewell, and turned back upon her homeward way, although she found it very difficult thus to leave the cart alone. At last the gaki-ami was brought to the hot springs of the famed temple of Kumano Gongen, and, by the aid of those compassionate persons who pitied its state, was daily enabled to experience the healing effects of the bath.
So he had a cart made for the gaki-ami, and he placed the nameless shape in it, and fastened to its breast a wooden tablet, inscribed with large characters. And the words of the inscription were these: "Take pity upon this unfortunate being, and help it upon its journey to the hot springs of the temple of Kumano.
I have a good reason to ask your name, because I am in truth that very gaki-ami whom you so kindly drew last year to Otsu in a cart." And with these words he produced the wooden tablet upon which Kohagi had written. Then she was greatly moved, and said: "I am very happy to see you thus recovered.
She passed the last night beside the nameless shape, which she would have to leave next day. "Often have I heard," she thought to herself, "that a gaki-ami is a being belonging to the world of the dead. This one, then, should know something about my dead husband. "Oh that this gaki-ami had the sense either of hearing or of sight!
And so, after much time, the gaki-ami in its cart appeared before the joroya of Yorodzuya Chobei; and Kohagi of Hitachi, seeing it, was greatly moved by the inscription.
Then he remembered the old tradition, that those who are put to death before having completed the number of years allotted to them in this world reappear or revive in the form called gaki-ami.
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