This sight made the youth very curious, and he turned to a man beside him and asked why the village was all in mourning, and why the beautiful young girl and her parents were weeping so bitterly.
“Are you a stranger in these parts that you ask such questions?” inquired the man.
“I come from beyond the other side of the forest, from far away,” replied the youth, “and I know nothing of this village or what has happened here.”
“Then I will tell you,” said the man. “Over in the forest yonder there dwells a terrible demon. Every year he requires that a maiden shall be offered up to him as a sacrifice. Many of our most beautiful maidens have already been sacrificed to him, and to-day it is the turn of the one you see within there, and she is the fairest of them all.”
“But why do not your men go into the forest and try to destroy this demon?” asked the youth.
“It would be useless, for we have been told and know that no mortal arm can prevail against him. He comes, as a cat, to the ruined temple over yonder in the forest, and with him comes a great company of seeming cats—but they also are demons and are his servants.”
When the youth heard this, he remembered the cats he had seen dancing in the temple the night before and the song they had sung; and presently he asked, “Who is Schippeitaro?”
When he asked this, those around who heard him began to laugh. “You speak as though Schippeitaro were a man,” said they. “Schippeitaro is a great dog that belongs to the Prince of this country. The Prince values him highly, for he is as big as a lion and twice as fierce. Never before was his like seen for strength and bigness, nor ever will be again.”
The youth asked where the Prince kept the hound, and as soon as he had learned this, he set off walking very rapidly in the direction the man pointed out to him.
After a while he came to a house with a walled garden back of it. In this house lived the man who had charge of Schippeitaro, and the walled garden was for the dog to roam about in.