Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/154

Rh much greater distance than before, and set it free. But, two days later, it came back, all red; and Kyűbei ceased to doubt.

"I think it is Tama," he said. "She wants something;—but what does she want?"

The wife responded:—

"I have still thirty momme of her savings. Perhaps she wants us to pay that money to the temple, for a Buddhist service on behalf of her spirit. Tama was always very anxious about her next birth."

As she spoke, the fly fell from the paper window on which it had been resting. Kyūbei picked it up, and found that it was dead.

Thereupon the husband and wife resolved to go to the temple at once, and to pay the girl's money to the priests. They put the body of the fly into a little box, and took it along with them.

Jiku Shōnin, the chief priest of the temple, on hearing the story of the fly, decided that Kyūbei and his wife had acted rightly in the matter. Then Jiku Shōnin performed a Segaki service on behalf of the spirit of Tama; and over the body of the fly were recited the eight rolls of the sutra Myōten, And the box containing the body of the fly was buried in the grounds of the temple; and above the place a sotoba was set up, appropriately inscribed. 註