The cow, jumping with the pain, broke down the fence and trampled the field. She ran against the weatherboarding of the house with her horns many times. And the noise of her hoofs and her bellowing, stirred the light mist of the night and echoed fearfully through the neighborhood. Then somebody opened a window shutter and stuck out his head. Because of the darkness the face was not recognizable, but it was surely that of the Devil in the form of the Brother. It may have been nerves, but the horns on his head were distinctly visible even in the night.
“You dirty cur, you, what do you mean by tearing up my tobacco field?” yelled the Devil in a sleepy voice, shaking his fist. He seemed extremely angry at being disturbed just after falling asleep.
But to the cattle dealer, who was hiding and watching on the other side of the field, these words of the Devil sounded like the voice of his God.
“You dirty cur, you, what do you mean by tearing up my tobacco field?”
After that everything ended most harmoniously, as always in stories of this kind. The cattle dealer guessed the name “tobacco” successfully and got the best of the Devil. And he took all the tobacco growing in the field. Thus ends the story.
But I have always wondered whether this tradition may not have in it a deeper meaning. For though the Devil was not able to make the cattle dealer’s body and soul his own, he managed instead to disseminate tobacco throughout all Japan. Wherefore, as the escape of the cattle dealer was coupled with his fall, was not the failure of the Devil accompanied by success? Though the Devil falls, he does not simply rise again. May it not be true that when a man thinks he has won out against temptation he finds to his surprise that he has met defeat?
And here let me add a brief account of what became of the Devil after that. When St. Francis came back, he was finally driven off of the land by