“Really? Is that true?”
When the old woman had finished her tale, he questioned her in a sneering voice. Then advancing one step forward, he suddenly removed his right hand from his carbuncle and, seizing the hag by the collar, said,
“Then I guess you won’t blame me for turning highwayman, will you? I, too, must starve else.”
Like a flash he stripped off her kimono. Then, as she tried to cling to his legs, he violently kicked her down upon the corpses. It was but five paces to the head of the ladder. With the dark brown kimono under his arm, he ran in a twinkling down the steep steps into the depths of the night.
It was not long before the old woman, who had lain for a space like one dead, raised her naked body up from among the corpses. Murmuring and groaning, she crawled by the help of the light that still burned to the top of the ladder. And from there, with her short white hair hanging about her face, she peered down under the gate. Outside there was nothing but black and cavernous night.
The lackey had already braved the rain and hurried away into the streets of Kyoto to rob.