Now, about ten days later, a very large fly came into the house, and began to fly round and round the head of Kyūbei. This surprised Kyūbei, because no flies of any kind appear, as a rule, during the Period of Greatest Cold, and the larger kinds of flies are seldom seen except in the warm season. The fly annoyed Kyūbei so persistently that he took the trouble to catch it, and put it out of the house,—being careful the while to injure it in no way; for he was a devout Buddhist. It soon came back again, and was again caught and thrown out; but it entered a third time. Kyūbei's wife thought this a strange thing. "I wonder," she said, "if it is Tama." [For the dead—particularly those who pass to the state of Gaki—sometimes return in the form of insects.] Kyūbei laughed, and made answer, "Perhaps we can find out by marking it." He caught the fly, and slightly nicked the tips of its wings with a pair of scissors,—after which he carried it to a considerable distance from the house and let it go.
Next day it returned. Kyūbei still doubted whether its return had any ghostly significance. He caught it again, painted its wings and body with beni (rouge), carried it away from the house to a much greater distance than before, and set it free. But, two days later, it came back, all red; and Kyūbei ceased to doubt.
"I think it is Tama," he said. "She wants something;—but what does she want?"
The wife responded:—
"I have still thirty mommé of her savings. Perhaps she wants us to pay that money to the temple, for a Buddhist service on behalf of her spirit. Tama was always very anxious about her next birth."
As she spoke, the fly fell from the paper window on which it had been resting. Kyūbei picked it up, and found that it was dead.
*
Thereupon the husband and wife resolved to go to the temple at once, and to pay the girl's money to the priests. They put the body of the fly into a little box, and took it along with them.
Jiku Shōnin, the chief priest of the temple, on hearing the story of the fly, decided that Kyūbei and his wife had acted rightly in the matter. Then Jiku Shōnin performed a Ségaki service on behalf of the spirit of Tama; and over the body of the fly were recited the eight rolls of the sûtra Myōten. And the box containing the body of the fly was buried in the grounds of the temple; and above the place a sotoba was set up, appropriately inscribed.
