Page:Kwaidan; Stories and Studies of Strange Things - Hearn - 1904.djvu/48

 of the further shore, and disappeared. SonjoSonjō [sic] took the dead bird home, and cooked it.

That night he dreamed a dreary dream. It seemed to him that a beautiful woman came into his room, and stood by his pillow, and began to weep. So bitterly did she weep that Sonjō felt as if his heart were being torn out while he listened. And the woman cried to him: “Why,—oh! why did you kill him?—of what wrong was he guilty? … At Akanuma we were so happy together,—and you killed him! … What harm did he ever do you? Do you even know what you have done?—oh! do you know what a cruel, what a wicked thing you have done? … Me too you have killed,—for I will not live without my husband! … Only to tell you this I came.” … Then again she wept aloud,—so bitterly that the voice of her crying pierced into the marrow of the listener’s bones;—and she sobbed out the words of this poem:—

[“''At the coming of twilight I invited him to return with me—! Now to sleep alone in the'' 24