Page:Kwaidan; Stories and Studies of Strange Things - Hearn - 1904.djvu/96

 Know, reverend Sir, that I am a jikininki, — an eater of human flesh. Have pity upon me, and suffer me to confess the secret fault by which I became reduced to this condition.

"A long, long time ago, I was a priest in this desolate region. There was no other priest for many leagues around. So, in that time, the bodies of the mountain-folk who died used to be brought here,— sometimes from great distances, — in order that I might repeat over them the holy service. But I repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business;— I thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession enabled me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety I was reborn, immediately after my death, into the state of a jikininki. Since then I have been obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people who die in this district: every one of them I must devour in the way that you saw last night. . . . Now, reverend Sir, let me beseech you to perform a Ségaki-service for me: help me by 72