once go on to Kiyoto and tell my cousin's patron, besides writing home
about it. What think you, gentlemen?" added he, turning to the other
travellers.

They, of course, were only too glad to avoid any hindrance to their
onward journey, and all with one voice agreed to what the ronin had
proposed; and so the matter was settled. When, at length, they reached
the shore, they left the boat, and every man went his way; but the
ronin, overjoyed in his heart, took the wandering priest's luggage, and,
putting it with his own, pursued his journey to Kiyoto.

On reaching the capital, the ronin changed his name from Shume to
Tokubei, and, giving up his position as a samurai, turned merchant, and
traded with the dead man's money. Fortune favouring his speculations,
he began to amass great wealth, and lived at his ease, denying himself
nothing; and in course of time he married a wife, who bore him a child.

Thus the days and months wore on, till one fine summer's night, some
three years after the priest's death, Tokubei stepped out on the veranda
of his house to enjoy the cool air and the beauty of the moonlight.
Feeling dull and lonely, he began musing over all kinds of things, when
on a sudden the deed of murder and theft, done so long ago, vividly
recurred to his memory, and he thought to himself, "Here am I, grown
rich and fat on the money I wantonly stole. Since then, all has gone
well with me; yet, had I not been poor, I had never turned assassin nor
thief. Woe betide me! what a pity it was!" and as he was revolving the
matter in his mind, a feeling of remorse came over him, in spite of all
he could do. While his conscience thus smote him, he suddenly, to his
utter amazement, beheld the faint outline of a man standing near a
fir-tree in the garden; on looking more attentively, he perceived that