Yanrei!
Then—O the pity of it!—she saw the mother of Seiza, weeping bitterly, and holding in her hand a Buddhist rosary. "O my good young lady," the mother of Seiza asked, "whence have you come; and whom do you want to see?"
Yanrei!
And O-Kichi said:—"I am the daughter of the thread-merchant of Kyōto. And I have come all the way here only because of the relation that has long existed between Master Seiza and myself. Therefore, I pray you, kindly permit me to see him."
Yanrei!
"Alas!" made answer the mother, weeping, "Seiza, whom you have come so far to see, is dead. To-day is the seventh day from the day on which he died." ... Hearing these words, O-Kichi herself could only shed tears.
Yanrei!
But after a little while she took her way to the cemetery. And there she found the sotoba[114] erected above the grave of Seiza; and leaning upon it, she wept aloud.
Yanrei!
[114] ] A wooden lath, bearing Buddhist texts, planted above graves. For a full account of the sotoba see my Exotics and Retrospectives: "The Literature of the Dead."