Chapter-2

Minokichi was awake by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (yuki-akari), he saw a woman in the room, a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath on him, and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and the white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful, though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him, then she smiled, and she whispered, "I don't want to treat you like the other man, because you are so young... You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody even your own mother about what you have seen this night, I shall know it and then I will kill you... Remember what I say!"

With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. When the woman went out he looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open, he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken by the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman, but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku's face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was dead...

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