The company, frightened out of their wits, called off the feast. From that day on, the people of that house were taken ill, including host and guests. Those who scolded him, those who tied him with ropes, those who pounded him, all died in a few days. Other members of the company, too, contracted typhus and the like, and died also.
It was commonly held that the boy was the Too-uk Spirit, but we cannot definitely say. Strange, indeed!
Note.—When the time comes for a clan to disappear from the earth, calamity befalls it. Even though a great spirit should come in at the door at such a feast time, if the guests had done as Confucius suggests, “Be reverent and distant,” instead of insulting him and making him more malignant than ever, they would have escaped. Still, devils and men were never intended to dwell together.
XL
GOD’S WAY
In a certain town there lived a man of fierce and ungovernable disposition, who in moments of anger used to beat his mother. One day this parent, thus beaten, screamed out, “Oh, God, why do you not strike dead this wicked man who beats his mother?”
The beating over, the son thrust his sickle through his belt and went slowly off to the fields where he was engaged by a neighbour in reaping buckwheat. The day was fine, and the sky beautifully clear. Suddenly a dark fleck of cloud appeared in mid-heaven, and a little later all the sky became black. Furious thunder followed, and rain came on. The village people looked out toward the field, where the flashes of lightning were specially noticeable. They seemed to see there a man with lifted sickle trying to ward them off. When the storm had cleared away, they went to see, and lo, they found the man who had beaten his mother struck dead and riven to pieces.