Chapter 31
In a village of Musashi, in the days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, there lived two woodcutters: Nakamura Taishi and an old man named Mosaku. Taishi was only eighteen years old. Every day the two went to a forest to do their jobs. To get there, they needed to cross a wide river by ferry.
One cold evening, a great snowstorm overtook them as they worked. By the time they reached the ferry, the boatman had gone, leaving the ferry on the other side of the river. The woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman's hut, glad to have found any kind of shelter, even though there was no brazier in the hut, and no place to build a fire. The two men fastened the door and lay down to rest with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel terribly cold; and they believed the storm w
