On her long way to Otsu, the only pleasing sights and sounds were the beautiful lilies growing wild by the roadside, the voices of the hibari and shijugara(1) and all the birds of spring that sang in the trees, and the songs of the peasant girls who were planting the rice.
But such sights and sounds could please her only a moment; for most of them caused her to dream of other days, and gave her pain by making her recollect the hopeless condition into which she had now fallen.
(1) Hibari, a species of field lark; shijugara, a kind of titmouse.
Though greatly wearied by the hard labor she had undertaken for three whole days, she would not go to an inn. She passed the last night beside the nameless shape, which she would have to leave next day.
"Often have I heard," she thought to herself, "that a gaki-ami is a being belonging to the world of the dead. This one, then, should know something about my dead husband.
"Oh that this gaki-ami had the sense either of hearing or of sight! Then I could question it about Kane-uji, either by word of mouth or in writing."
When day dawned above the neighboring misty mountains, Kohagi went away to get an inkstone and a brush; and she soon returned with these to the place where the cart was.
Then, with the brush, she wrote, below the inscription upon the wooden tablet attached to the breast of the gaki-ami, these words:—
"When you shall have recovered and are able to return to your province, pray call upon Kohagi of Hitachi, a servant of Yorodzuya Chobei of the town of Obaka in the province of Mino.
"For it will give me much joy to see the person for whose sake I obtained with difficulty five days' freedom, three of which I gave to drawing your cart as far as this place."