The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tama, by Watanna Onoto, Illustrated by Genjiro Kataoka

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THE FOX-WOMAN AMONG THE LOTUS

TAMA

BY

ONOTO WATANNA

ILLUSTRATED BY

GENJIRO KATAOKA

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS ✥ MCMX

Books by

ONOTO WATANNA

Tama Illustrated. Crown 8vo, net $1.60

A Japanese Nightingale Ill’d. 8vo, net 2.00

The Wooing of Wistaria Ill’d. Post 8vo. 1.50

The Heart of Hyacinth Ill’d in Tint. 8vo, net 2.00

A Japanese Blossom Illustrated. 8vo, net 2.00

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.

Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers

─────────

Published October, 1910.

Printed in the United States of America

ILLUSTRATIONS

TAMA

TAMA

I

Fukui was in an unwonted state of excitement. For days the people had talked of but one event. Even the small boys, perilously astraddle the bamboo poles, the scullery wenches of the kitchen, the very mendicants of the street, the highest and lowest of the citizens of Fukui talked of the coming of the O-Tojin-san (Honorable Mr. Foreigner).

For at last the exalted Daimio of the province had acceded to the pleadings and eager demands of the students of the university, and, at great expense and trouble, a foreign professor had been imported.

Signs of preparation were everywhere visible. Vigorous housecleaning was in evidence. The professional story-tellers, who took the place of newspapers in these days, reaped small fortunes in their halls. Some of them opened booths on the streets and regaled their auditors with strange accounts of America and its people.

Already the Tojin-san’s house and household had been chosen for him, from the Daimio’s high officer and the four samourai body-guard, who were to protect him from any possible Jo-i (foreign hater), down to his body-servant.

An enormous old historical Shiro (mansion), two hundred and seven years old, was assigned as his residence, and was now undergoing certain remarkable changes. For heavy woollen carpets, with flowers and figured designs, were being nailed down over the ancient matting in the chief rooms. Strange articles of furniture, massive and heavy as iron, were pushed into the great chambers, under the supervising hand of a dapper, rosy-cheeked young samourai who was to serve as interpreter to the Tojin. His name was Genji Negato, and he had already lived among foreigners in the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama. He spoke the English language very well indeed, and his knowledge of the white man and his ways was extraordinary.

Now, as he ordered this or that article set in place, his full red lips curled smilingly under his little bristly mustache. He called the servants in one by one, lecturing each in turn in regard to his especial duties. Incidentally he regaled them with tales of the habits and desires of the white man.

Food sufficient for six ordinary mortals must be prepared for his individual consumption. Raw meat and game, slightly scorched before fire, were essential. A never-failing spring of what the original American had aptly called “fire-water” must be constantly flowing at and between meals and day and night. Such was the thirst of the white man. Brooms must be in readiness to follow the trail of the dust and mud-laden boots of the professor, since he would not remove them even in the house. Finally, his supreme favor could be won by having at hand always the sweetest and prettiest maidens to entertain and caress him. And so on through a strange list.

If the students of the college where the Tojin-san was to teach were elated at the prospect of his coming, their joy was hardly shared by his household. It was in a flutter of excited fear. Even the stolid, impassive-faced samourai guard discussed in undertones among themselves the degrading service to which they were reduced in these degenerate days. To guard the body of a mere Tojin! Well, such was the will of the Daimio of Echizen, and a samourai is the right hand of his Prince. His the task to obey even the caprice of his lord, or take his own life in preference to service too far beneath his honor.

In the humbler regions of the Shiro, however, the servants discussed the matter less pessimistically. Some rumor of the generosity and wealth of foreigners had floated across the vague tide of gossip. Anyhow, the preparations for his coming went blithely on here, and already odors of vigorous advance cooking were being wafted from the kitchen regions, warming and savoring the great chambers, and awakening into noisy life the vast army of rats and bats which had long made their homes in the eaves and rafters of the old deserted mansion, now for the first time in years to be occupied by a tenant.

Everything was quite in readiness when the cook’s wife’s baby’s nurse (for his entire family were, of course, also domiciled in the Shiro) missed a portion of her rice. She had turned about to give better attention to master baby-san, when, so she averred, a “white hand” reached out of nowhere and seized the remnants of her supper. She ran squealing with her tale to her mistress, who, in turn, rushed with it to her lord, the cook. He put aside his apron and sought Genji Negato, who solemnly called a council of war. To the four samourai guard the entire household looked for a solution and ending of the impending trouble.

Measures should be taken at once, it was unanimously decided. It would be to their Prince’s everlasting disgrace should the exalted foreign devil also become a victim of the dreaded Fox-Woman of Atago Yama, for, undoubtedly, this mischievous and irrepressible sprite of the mountains was at her tricks again. In the names, therefore, of the august Tojin-san, nay, in the very name of the Imperial Daimio of Echizen, it was the duty of the honorable samourai to spare in no wise the witch should she be caught trespassing upon the estate of the Prince’s guest and protégé.

They fell to telling weird tales of the latest doings of the fox-woman. A Tsuruga child had followed the witch-girl into the mountains, believing her glittering hair to be the rays of the sun, and stretching out his tiny hands to touch and hold it. To propitiate the dread creature, the parents had set out daily food at the foot of the mountains, and thus, for a time at least, the hunger of the fox-woman had been satisfied, but the child had never been the same again, fretting and crying constantly for the “Sun Lady.” As its peevishness continued, the parents revenged themselves upon its abductor, and ceased to set out the nightly repast, bravely facing down their fear of the witch’s certain anger and retaliation.

Since then she had been forced to seek her sustenance elsewhere. A basket of fish disappeared overnight from a vendor’s locked stand. A bag of rice was found on the mountain-side of the river, as if the thief, finding it too heavy, had dropped it in her flight.

And now—could it be possible that the most distinguished (though augustly degraded) guest Fukui had known in years was to suffer by the depredations of the fox-woman?

Samourai Iroka voted in favor of killing the witch outright. But not by the means of his own personal sword, for he was unmarried and had no descendants to pray for his soul should it be forced to pass along on a journey.

Samourai Asado feared for the safety of his wife and family in the event of his honorable sword being stained by the blood of the witch-girl. Once a similar goblin had torn the head and arms from the body of a sleeping babe, in revenge for the mere pin-prick of a samourai sword.

Samourai Hirata suggested referring the matter to the Daimio himself; but was urged against this by the others, for was not the fox-woman the one black blot upon the escutcheon of their exalted Prince, seeing she was indeed, and alas! of his own blood?

Finally, Samourai Numura, an ancient, grizzled warrior of the most stolid common sense, gruffly insisted that the matter was the affair of the Tojin himself, and from him alone should they receive commands upon the matter. It was agreed, therefore, that they should wait for the coming of the Tojin-san. Out of his vaunted western wisdom certainly should he be able to suggest the solution of the problem.

And, in the Season of Greatest Cold, while the snow whirled in feathery flakes over all the Province of Echizen, and the winds blew in laughing, whispering murmurs through the glistening camphor and pine trees, across the sacred bosom of Lake Biwa, and over the snow-crowned mountains between, the Tojin-san came to Fukui, the “Well of Blessing.”

II

The room was so large that even with the seven lighted andon and the three ancient takahiras glimmering dully where they hung from the raftered ceiling overhead, it was chiefly in shadow. Set at intervals against the sliding walls were a few large pieces of heavy black-walnut furniture, grotesque objects in the otherwise completely empty chamber. The room itself was cold, but a kotatsu in the centre of the room had been filled with live coals, and over this the Tojin-san crouched. He sat upon the floor, close to the fire-frame, his knees drawn up, his hands encircling them.

After a long and tortuous journey over land and water, by boat, by horse, by kurumma, and often on foot—a never-ending, long-winding, cold journey, the Tojin-san was at last at home! This was Fukui, where he had contracted to live for seven years of his life; this vast, empty, bleak mansion was his house.

He had started upon the journey with an alert and quickened pulse, and an ardent ambition to serve, to raise up, to love this strange people to whom he had pledged himself. A short sojourn was made in Tokio and Kioto—days of sheer delight in a charm so new it intoxicated. Then, leaving the open ports, under the escort sent by the Prince of Echizen, he had taken finally that plunge into the great unknown country itself, where only half a dozen foreigners had been before him.

The journey had been one of many weeks. Crossing waters in a fragile craft, which tossed and heaved with every tide, he had come to know the true meaning of the Japanese saying that “a sea voyage is an inch of hell.”

For days his party had been snow-bound on a desolate mountain, far from even the smallest village or town, and, when finally they had issued forth, it was only to encounter new perils, in savage-souled ronins who hung about the vicinity of the Tojin-san’s party, their narrow, wicked eyes intent upon his destruction. How many white men before him had started upon a similar journey, in other provinces of Japan, and met the then common fate—a stab in the back, or in the dark! And the punishments, the indemnities, the humiliations forced upon the government by the foreigners, but added to the hatred and malice of the Jo-i (foreign haters).

But the Prince of Echizen was of the most enlightened school. No foreign teacher or guest within his province should suffer the smallest hurt! His edicts in the matter were so emphatic that they reached even the humblest of the citizens, and the Tojin-san, did he but know it, was practically immune from attack. Indeed, his pilgrimage was in the nature of one of triumph. Whatever their inner feelings toward the intruder, the people met him with smiles and expressions of welcome. Every little town and hamlet sent to him on its outskirts deputations of high officials. There had been feasts here and banquets there, and always and everywhere about him he saw the same brown face, the same glittering eye, the same elusive smile.

Now the last Daimio’s officer was gone, the last officious minister of his Prince had chanted his singsong poem of welcome, and the Tojin-san was alone!

Even the individual members of his household had dispersed. They had come in one by one in solemn procession, led by the samourai guard, who, as they prostrated themselves, sucked in their breath fiercely, expelling it in long, sibilant hisses. The cook, his assistants, and wife and family formed a small procession of their own, one behind the other, executing a series of such comical bows and bobs that the stern lips of the Tojin-san had softened in spite of himself, particularly so, when the tiniest one, a toddling baby no more than two years old, had solemnly brought its diminutive shaven pate to the floor, and had almost capsized in a somersault in its efforts to emulate its elders’ politeness.

WELCOME TO TOJIN-SAN

Now the weary, half-closed eyes of the Tojin-san were seeing other faces, his mind travelling backward over other scenes, very far away. He saw a great, green campus, overshadowed by towering elms. Bright-eyed, white-skinned boys were singing huskily as they swept across the lawns into the tall stone buildings, which seemed to smile at them with maternal indulgence. The Tojin-san was seated at a desk, looking across at that sea of boyish faces. Strange how they had repulsed him; how he had even felt a bitterness that was almost hatred for them in that other time and place! And now! Now he caught himself thinking of them with a tenderness which almost stifled.

Then the jaded mind of the Tojin-san wandered out into another scene of the past, and out of a longer, darker memory a woman’s cold, unsmiling face mocked him.

“Marry you!” she had cried, and not even her native courtesy could suppress the note of horror in her voice. “Oh—h!” she had cried out, covering her eyes shudderingly, “if you could but—see—yourself!”

The Tojin-san had indeed seen himself that night. Glaring back at him in a tragic grimness his own fearful face had looked at him from the mirror. Not that he had not known the blight upon him; but he had been dull, stupid, slow to realize its full horror.

Time was when the Tojin-san was as other men, smooth-skinned, level-eyed, very good to look upon. But in a God and Man forsaken little town crushed between the mountains and the sea, a young and ardent doctor of long ago had given himself up to a sublime heroism. Shoulder to shoulder with a few—one or two only beside himself—they had fought the plague of smallpox. From this fight the Tojin-san had emerged marked! With the optimism and blindness of youth, however, he had gone back to the woman he loved, and she had struck at him!

There is a Japanese proverb which says: “The tongue three inches long can kill a man six feet tall.” The Tojin-san thought of this now. A woman’s tongue, the mere brutal smiting of her words, had wrought a curious effect upon his entire life. From that time on he had avoided women as he had not a vile plague. He led the life of an ascetic, wrapped in his books and sciences, making few friends, avoiding others, with the sensitive fear upon him that the whole world avoided and shrank also from him. And while still a young man—under forty—they had named him “Old Grind” at the university.

Then upon him suddenly had come a new upheaval, a pent-up, passionate longing to break away from the dull hopeless treadmill to which he seemed bound.

“Old Grind!” So age was to be clapped upon him while the vital fires of youth still throbbed in an agony in his blood. There was a new life, an exhilarating, more inspiring life to be led, out in that old-new world across the seas! It beckoned to those of adventurous souls and those who were weary of a drowsy, torpid existence, wherein hope of a new dawn had vanished beyond memory. The Tojin-san panted for this new life. He wanted to swing his arms in a wilder world, to breathe less vitiated air, to feel himself alive again! He had made of himself, for half a lifetime, a mummy for the sake of a woman he had not even really loved. It was fantastic!

Out of this curious rebellion against Fate which had swept upon him like a tidal wave, the Tojin-san had broken his bonds.

He was in the strange wild land he had yearned for, strange faces peered at him askance, and strange gods mocked him from their temples with their sphinx-like impenetrability. And he crouched, shivering, over a kotatsu in a great, historical yashiki, cold and empty as a very mausoleum, and the strong man within him recognized and fought the weakness come upon him—the aching, longing, praying, for the mere sight of a white, familiar face!

So still was the night, even the glide of a gaki (spirit) across the cracking snow without must have been heard. A breeze just trembled through the frost-incrusted bough of a camphor-tree, and it bristled and broke, the twigs snapping and bouncing down on the frozen ground beneath.

Something crept out of the shadows of the woods at the foot of the mountains, leaped like a fawn across the wide arm of the castle moat, and slid over the grounds between it and the shiro Matsuhaira. An army of crows which lodged in the attic of a dilapidated ruin of what had once been a go-down (treasure-house) suddenly began to flap their wings, calling to each other querulously and making short, futile, terrified flights. A rat fled from the go-down interior and scuttled across to the kitchen in the rear of the mansion, and the Tojin-san raised a startled face, listening to a new sound.

It was as if one without were tapping or scratching ever so faintly upon the amado (winter walls). He did not move, but fastened his gaze upon the point whence he had fancied the sound proceeded. Now it came from another direction and tapped lightly, timidly again, as a child might have done.

The Tojin-san came to his feet with a bound. He flung wide the screens of his chamber, now on this side, now on that, and now those opening upon the grounds. Not a soul was visible. Nothing but the white, still snow, glittering like silver under the moon-rays. He looked up at the outjutting eaves, felt along them with his hand, though a curious instinct told him insistently that the touch upon his screens had been intelligent and human. Slowly he drew them into place again, and, as he did so, a voice, low as a sigh, called to him across the bleak snow:

“To-o—jin-san! To-o-o-jin—san! To-o-o-jin—san! To-o-o—!”

Tojin-san! That was the name he had heard everywhere. The one they had given him. Some one was calling him, wanted him, needed him, perhaps!

It was a step only down to the gardens below. He took it at a leap, crossed the intervening lawn and plunged into the wooded grove beyond. On and on he followed the sound of the voice, still sighing across to him, now pleading, now wistful, now wild and now—mocking, with the tone of a teasing sprite which laughed through a veil of tears.

Suddenly he stopped, white-lipped. He had been within a step of the but half-frozen moat. One more, and he would have plunged into it. A shuddering sense of horror, of shock, seized him, and held him there rooted to the spot, bewildered, stunned, his ears still strained listening to the drifting voice, which had vanished across the heights and lost itself in the white looming shadows of the mountains.

III

“Your excellency, though he live a million honorable years, could not estimate the augustly degraded chagrin experienced by my exalted Prince in my humble and servile person.”

So spoke the Daimio’s high officer, through the interpreter, Genji Negato.

The American held his shaking hands over the replenished kotatsu as the Daimio’s officer, hastily summoned by the guard, set himself the distasteful task of explaining to him the existence of the fox-woman.

A fox-woman, so he explained solemnly, was a female human being into whose body the soul of a fox had entered. In Japanese mythology the fox occupies an important position, and the fox-woman is a creature greatly to be feared. Her face and form, so said the Japanese, were of a marvellous whiteness and a beauty so dazzling that a mortal must cover his eyes to escape blindness. Her hair resembled the sun-rays, so bright and glittering its color and effect. Gifted with this beauty of face and form, but devoid of soul, she had but one ruling and controlling ambition. She spent her days and nights lurking about the mountain passes, behind and within rocks and caves, luring men—aye, and women and children, too!—to destruction.

Something in the half-skeptical smile on the taciturn face of the Tojin-san stopped the officer’s recital. His expression became troubled, revealing a sensitive pride unduly wounded. Plainly the foreign Sensei looked upon his explanations in the light of a fairy-tale.

“Your excellency disbelieves our legend of the fox-woman?” he queried courteously.

“Legends,” said the Tojin-san slowly, “belong to literature, and are tales to charm and beguile adults and deceive children. In the West we no longer heed them. We name them superstitions, and we’ve burned out our superstitions as we did our witches in the early days.”

The Japanese sat up stiffly, and in the chilly room he waved his fan regularly to and fro.

“You deny the existence of spirits in the West?”

“At least we do not create them out of our fancy or thought,” said the American gravely.

The officer said vehemently:

“They exist actively in Japan, honorable sir. Though you ignore them, they will force themselves upon you—as to-night, excellency!”

The Tojin-san frowned slightly. Then, thoughtfully, he emptied his pipe on the old bronze hibachi.

“You wish me to believe that my visitor to-night was a—spirit?”

“She was worse,” said the officer earnestly, “for she was invested with at least the form of a human being.”

“How do you know she is not human?”

It was the Japanese’s turn to frown. His narrow eyes drew sternly together. His voice was stubborn. He spoke as if determined to justify some indisputable course he had taken.

“She is unlike us in any way, exalted sir. No human being ever was created with such fiendish beauty. Her acts are those of the gaki, moreover. She is mischievous, impish, wicked, delighting as much in torturing and frightening the poor as well as the rich, little children as well as their elders. The birds of the air come at her calling and follow her whithersoever she bids them. Degraded dogs and cats, forlorn beasts of the mountains and the forests are her body-guard, defying mere human beings to molest or take her. Her home is among the tombs of Sho Kon Sha. She is of the Temple Tokiwa, long forsaken of men and accursed by the gods.”

The Tojin-san raised himself with a show of more interest.

“A temple housing your dreaded fox-woman!” he exclaimed, whimsically.

“Yes, alas so, excellency,” admitted the Japanese miserably. “Her mother was Nii-no-Ama (noble nun of second rank) and kin to our august Prince. She broke her vows to the Lord Buddha, desecrated and disgraced his temple. The gods visited their wrath upon her offspring. They gave it a body only—no soul, save that of the fox. She is beyond the pale, honored sir, and no clean being may look upon or touch her.”

The Tojin-san, sitting up erectly now, was holding his lower lip thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger.

“Your fox-woman then is some sort of outcast, who has lived all her life avoided by her kind?”

“She had the company of her degraded parents,” said the officer gruffly, “until she was the age of ten. Then a zealous band of former Danka (parishioners) assaulted the temple by fire and sword. The parents of the fox-woman met a deserved death, being literally torn to pieces before the very altar of Great Shaka himself.”

The Daimio’s officer paused, his little black eyes glittering with a fanatical light. Then the exhilaration dropped from his voice.

“But the ways of the Lord Buddha are strange. How could the devoted Danka conceive that Shaka would turn his wrath upon them also, for thus scorching his altar with unclean blood. Since the Restoration, excellency, our city’s history has been one of blood and poverty. Some assert the province is doomed. Others, more optimistic, that it is but passing through its new birth pains, and that, as of old, its history will be glorious.”

The Tojin-san puffed at his relighted pipe in meditative silence. Then, very quietly, he asked:

“Do you lay the misfortunes of your province upon this fox-woman, as you call her?”

“Aye!” said the officer almost fiercely. “The hand of Fate fell heaviest upon us after the assassination of the intruder. We have never recovered from the humiliations heaped upon us by—the countries of the West. The bombardment of beloved Kagoshima by the allied forces of the western nations followed almost instantly after the death by violence of—”

He stopped abruptly, and coughed in gruff alarm behind his now sheltering fan. He had been upon the verge of telling what had been forbidden.

The Tojin-san looked puzzled, baffled.

“I do not see the connection,” he said.

“Yet—it is so,” said the Japanese vaguely, shifting his eyes from the averted faces of the samourai guard.

Said the American forcefully:

“It seems to me an amazing thing that to-day when you are frankly hoping to join the nations of enlightenment, you still give yourselves up to barbarous persecution because of what, after all, is nothing but a legend fit for children only. For my part, I intend to sweep from my house vigorously the absurd belief I find actually seated on my hearth-stone.”

The Japanese said solemnly:

“There are several things in life it is impossible to do, exalted sir. We cannot throw a stone to the sun, or scatter a fog with a fan. We cannot build a bridge to the clouds. With this little hand I cannot dip up the ocean. We bow to the elevated wisdom of the West your excellency has come to teach us in honorable chemistry and physics, but, though we humbly solicit pardon for thus stating, there is nothing your augustness can tell us of our own beliefs—and knowledge.”

He made a slight, stiff sign to his attendants and they assisted him to arise. The American stood up also. He was smiling grimly.

“When the snows melt,” he said, “I shall ask for guides of your excellency, and personally make a pilgrimage to the lair of this dreaded fox-woman of the mountains.”

At that the Daimio’s officer’s face distinctly paled. His impassive features were anxious, troubled.

“What does your augustness seek to do?—regenerate one without a soul?”

“I wish merely to see her. She must be an interesting specimen—of her kind.”

“‘Making an idol does not give it a soul,’” quoted the Daimio’s officer, solemnly. “Honored sir, a snake has its charm to some, and the vampire is kin to the snake. In Japan we believe the fox-woman one form of vampire. Condescend, exalted sir, to beware.”

The Tojin-san laughed shortly, contemptuously. He was a man of gigantic stature, and as he stood there towering above his gleaming-eyed visitor there was something about his attitude careless, indifferent, fearless, and beyond the understanding of the Oriental. With a morbid recollection of specific instructions from his Prince, the officer restrained his fingers, turned almost automatically toward the two short swords hanging at his side.

“It is my duty, excellent sir,” he said with forced courtesy, “to convince you of the danger wherewith you seek to play. Condescend to permit the humble one once again to be seated.”

“By all means,” said the American, hospitably, and, in a moment, they were back seated upon their respective mats, their pipes refilled at the hibachi.

IV

“You have stated, honored sir, that the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama is but a superstition worthy of a child, and you have laughed, Mr. sir, at the possibility of danger from proximity with the forsaken creature. Thus spoke and laughed another before your time in Fukui. We of Echizen do not forget the very recent fate of Gihei Matsuyama.”

“And pray who was Gihei Matsuyama, and what was his fate?” asked the Tojin-san, good-humoredly.

The fanatical fire was back in the eyes of the officer. He had thrust forward his thin, yellow face and was regarding the Tojin-san with an almost venomous glance. His words, however, were pacific, and, as he talked, the American showed a greater interest with every moment.

“We sent seven of our youths to the universities of the West. They were chosen from the most intelligent and noblest of our families. Gihei Matsuyama was one of these, and in him we had particular interest, for he was of Fukui. After two years’ sojourn in Europe he returned for service in Dai Nippon, and we gave him a position of honor and housed him in an honorable yashiki hard by Atago Yama.

“As a youth—as a child, he had known the story of the fox-woman. His honorable sire and other male kin had participated in the slaughter of the parents of the creature. Now with this new wisdom he had acquired in the West, as fresh as new-spread varnish upon him, Gihei laughed to scorn the stories of her fiendish origin, and boasted he would dissipate them as the air does the steam. Making a bold and ingenuous wager that he would enslave the sprite, he set himself the task of tracking her. Unaided by even the counsel of the priests of neighboring temples, he blithely followed the trail of the witch over the river, through the woods and mountains and in and out of the cemeteries, until he had driven her to her final refuge—the Temple of Tokiwa, wherein no man had stepped since the accursed blood spilt before the eye of the eternal Lord.”

Here the Daimio’s high officer reverently bowed to the floor, ere he continued his narrative, his eyes gleaming more fiercely as he proceeded.

“As he hesitated upon the threshold, divided between a desire to penetrate its mysteries, and an instinct which peremptorily bade him depart, she came forth from the temple doors dancing, as the nuns of old danced for the gods, with her wild, unbound hair outmatching the sun, and her hungry, vivid, smiling lips scarlet as the deadly poppy. He, having looked upon her face, became blinded to all else on earth. Infatuated and maddened, he sought to touch, to seize the creature, when she fled suddenly before him, mocking him with the silver laughter of the sea-siren and hiding her face in the glimmering veil of her hair.

“Thus they sped on, she ever before him, with her luring hair streaming like a gilded cloud in the wind, springing as lightly as a breeze from rock to rock, over brooks and slender streams that melted in between, up this cliff and down that dell and through this valley, on and on she led the infatuated seeker.

“Suddenly, while his dazzled eyes were fastened solely upon her, and he reached forth a hand to seize her, she darted like a nymph over some unseen chasm of the mountains. He stumbled in her tracks, reached out vainly to seize her, saw not the gulf at his feet, and plunged headlong down into the abyss.”

The mask-like face of the Daimio’s officer quivered. He wiped his face with a hand that shook visibly. Then, rejecting his breath in that hissing fashion so peculiar to the Japanese, he added fiercely:

“This, honorable sir, is the story of Gihei Matsuyama and the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama. It belongs not to the lips only of the children, as you name them, but is true, well-authenticated history, which any one in Fukui can prove to you.”

The Tojin-san was silenced. He had followed the officer’s story with unabated interest. He had no word now in defense of this Japanese Lorelei. His voice was grave, stern:

“What did she do—when the boy disappeared?”

“There are different stories, honored sir. Some say she not even stopped in her flight. Others that she came of nights and hung over the edges of the chasm, shrouding her mouth in her hands and calling to her victim beneath as if she had the power to lure him back. But we have no certain version of this part of the tragedy. For the first part, we have the tale, four times repeated, from the body-servants of Gihei Matsuyama, who dutifully had followed their master upon his wild quest.”

The Daimio’s high officer arose and made several profound obeisances to the Tojin-san. His face had resumed its immobile melancholy. As he was backing formally toward the exit, bowing at every step, the American suddenly remembered his name. He took a step toward him, his hand impetuously outstretched:

“Pardon me, the boy you speak of was—near and dear to you, was he not?”

Slowly the officer raised his head. Not a quiver broke the stony impassivity of his face. His eyes met the Tojin’s blankly:

“He was—my son!” he said.

V

The sense of discouragement and gloom which had seemed to take full hold upon the Tojin-san on his first night in Fukui was, after all, but temporary. He awoke the following morning, feeling refreshed and invigorated. The sun was pouring into his room, gilding even the farthest corner with a friendly touch. He jumped out of bed, donned a warm bath-robe and shoved his feet into fur slippers. Crossing the room in a few quick strides, he threw open one of the latticed sliding doors.

It was a clear, cold day, but the snow, enshrouding trees and ground, glistened with the warm sun upon it. The army of crows on the roof of the go-down were chattering and fighting among themselves like magpies, and a monkey, swinging by one foot from a camphor bough, shook its fist playfully in his direction, screwing up its face in apparent derision.

From the direction of the narrow river, which threaded its ribbon-like way in the valley below, a rollicking voice was heard in song, and, presently, the owner of the voice climbed up the crest of the slope, skirted the sunken garden hard by the Tojin-san’s windows and moved across the lawns toward the kitchen regions in the rear. She was a great, fat girl, whose enormous, muscular arms were balancing on either side huge pails of water. As she waddled along, wheezing and singing, she resembled, to the Tojin-san’s humorous sense, a bag of jelly, her bosoms and thighs shaking at every step, her fat soft cheeks keeping time in unison. Close upon her heels, and, himself carrying two smaller pails of water, the cook’s diminutive heir toddled solemnly after her.

It was he who first perceived the Tojin-san at the opened door, and he promptly dropped his pails upon the serving-maid’s heels, causing her to kick backward in squalling alarm as the cold water splashed about her bare legs and drenched her scanty skirts. Doubtless she would have punished her small charge, had she not at this juncture also perceived the Tojin. Her thick red lips fell instantly agape. She stared at him in a stunned wonder. Then her knees began to wabble, and she attempted to make an obeisance. With every kowtow she essayed, the waters from her pails bounced up and merrily splashed her. The Tojin-san burst into hearty laughter, and after a moment maid and youngster joined in his mirth. They then scuttled off like a pair of panic-stricken rats, their shining, wet heels flashing like snowballs in the sun behind them.

This simple domestic incident put the Tojin-san into an excellent humor at once. As he looked after the comical pair, and then turned back to gaze, entranced, at the magnificent view on all sides of him, his garden exquisite even in its winter dress, he marvelled at his gloom of the previous night. Then his glance went upward, travelled across the pure blue sky, and rested upon the snowy bosoms of Atago Yama and Hakusan. Suddenly he thought of the fox-woman. There was something chill, forbidding, sinister in those great, beautiful mountains of snow, looming out there in the sunny sky. He pictured this forsaken creature threading her bleak way under the towering frost-incrusted pines. The gloom of the previous night fell upon him again like a shadow. Shivering, he went indoors, snapping the closed latticed doors behind him.

A fine horse had been provided for the American teacher, and he rode abroad through the streets of Fukui, under an escort sent by the Prince of Echizen himself. Everywhere the friendly and curious citizens ran out to see the white-faced teacher, and bows and smiles were the general rule on all sides.

Occasionally, however, he met the scowling, threatening glance of some roving samourai, who, the interpreter explained, under the new order of things, was out of office and consequently a ronin. It was one of the unfortunate effects of the Restoration that so many men of the sword, who had previously been supported by the people as retainers in the service of princely houses, now found themselves without aristocratic employment, and, too proud to turn to trade, or other equally debasing labor, they wandered about the provinces, voicing their discontent of the order of things, picking quarrels on the slightest provocation, and prophesying dread things for the empire when it should fall under the dominion and patronage of the nations of the West. The ronins were all Jo-i (foreign haters), and they alone the Tojin-san need fear. Happily, the Prince of Echizen had furnished an adequate guard for his protection, and the students of the college, themselves samourai, or sons of samourai, were all pledged to protect the Tojin-san from harm.

Presently they arrived at the school, an enormous building, once the citadel of the Castle, and here nine hundred students received the Tojin-san with a veritable ovation.

As he stood straightly before them, looking across at that sea of bright friendly faces, is it any wonder he recalled another scene in America, so similar, yet dissimilar, and that his heart went out yearningly to the youths facing him?

These intelligent, eager-faced boys were looking to him to guide and lead them. And, in turn, already they had pledged themselves to be his vital friends and allies. He felt emboldened, courageous, proud, elated. Not for a moment would he have retraced his steps to that other land he had regretted.

VI

In the Tojin-san’s absence several aggravating accidents had happened in his house. While little Taro, the cook’s youngest child, was sitting on the doorstep in the sun, nibbling on a sammari sembei (thunder cake), suddenly from behind an adjacent pine-tree the fox-woman had appeared, and before the frightened child could open its mouth to scream she had pounced upon him, nipped the cake cleanly from his hand and was off.

The child’s nurse (who was none other than the fat wench of the morning), who adored her charge, and had already herself suffered at the hands of the mountain witch, rushed out valiantly at the child’s loud cry of alarm. Her fury getting the better of her fear, she started in pursuit of their tormentor.

The latter she discovered serenely seated upon the topmost bough of a bamboo-tree, where she was demolishing the rice cracknel at her leisure. From this perch she threw white pebbles, with which her sleeves seemed loaded, down upon the head of the irate Obun, and while the latter was execrating her and calling upon Ema (the Lord of Hell) to come to her assistance the fox-woman slid down the bamboo trunk so swiftly and so silently she was beside the terrified serving-maid before the latter knew. She felt her arms caught in a sudden squeezing grip. Sharp fingers sank into her thick, fat flesh, crept up along her arms to her shoulders, nipped at her breast, her neck, her cheeks, her great muscular legs, and with a last vicious tweak at her nose, the fox-woman had again vanished.

The kitchen was in an uproar, the cook’s wife in hysterics, and Obun herself reduced to such a state of stunned terror it was impossible to get her to stir from a corner of the kitchen whither she had fled like a whipped dog for refuge.

The Tojin-san, as master of the house, was besought to lend his honorable assistance and advice. He ordered that Obun be brought before him.

After some delay there was a sound as of scuffling and shoving in the hall, and presently the perspiring face of the cook was seen through the parted screens. He was pushing something which looked like a great soft ball along before him, and, in turn, ordering and pleading with the object in question to stand upon its feet and help itself. He was assisted in his pushing endeavors by a small army of lesser menials of the kitchen, who took turns in pushing and shoving the unwilling Obun into the presence of her dread master, the Tojin-san. Presently she was at his feet, her face hidden on the floor.

“Come, come!” said he, suppressing his inclination to laugh. “Stand up, my good girl.”

This was translated in sharp peremptory tones by his interpreter:

“Thou worm of a slattern! Rise to thy degraded and filthy feet. How dare thee bring agitation into the chamber of the Guai-koku-jin [outside countryman] guest and protégé of His Imperial Highness the terrible Prince of Echizen.”

Whereupon Obun came tremblingly to her feet, and shaking from head to foot, raised a pair of eyes that rolled with terror to the face of the Tojin-san. What she saw there must have reassured her. The rugged features of the giant foreigner were softened humorously. In the keen gray eyes bent upon her she saw nothing but kindness and understanding. Instantly she began to whimper, like a great baby unexpectedly comforted.

“You are in trouble, my good girl,” said the Tojin, in his deep, kindly voice. “Pray tell me what ails you.”

And the interpreter translated:

“Repeat to your terrible and inflexible master the incidents of the morning, and arouse not his dreadful wrath with vain exaggerations and lies.”

She opened her lips to speak, encouraged by his smile, closed them again, and mutely uncovered first her arms, then her neck, and finally her great soft breast.

The Tojin-san, his brows now drawn in a slight frown together, examined the girl’s wounds, and with the quick eye of a surgeon instantly perceived their nature. She had been pinched sharply by little relentless fingers which had evidently flown with lightning swiftness from one portion of the hapless maid’s body to the other, and finally with a last mischievous tweak had left their mark upon the round bit of putty which served Obun for a nose. The Tojin-san whistled under his breath. Obun had certainly been the victim of a most curious and spiteful antagonist.

He gave some brief directions for healing the wounds, and then turning gravely to his interpreter admonished his servants for their excitement and foolish fears.

Undoubtedly, Obun had got the worst of her fight with this fox-woman, as they chose to name her; but probably, had she not permitted herself to be overcome with fears, she might have left her own mark upon her assailant also. It was vain and foolish to regard this troublesome one who annoyed them so often in the light of a spirit or witch or ghost, as they believed her to be. There were no such things in the world.

The interpreter repeated these instructions with personal embellishments, and the little army of servitors with sidelong glances of wonder and awe at their master sucked in and expelled their breaths, and, with final servile bumping of heads to the floor, retreated kitchenward.

The Tojin-san remained for a moment apparently plunged in puzzled thought. Suddenly he turned toward his interpreter, who was regarding him with popping eyes of interest. Indeed no move, no word, no action of the white man escaped the notice of Genji Negato, who found him an object of absorbing interest and wonder. His manner of eating, his manner of sleeping, his manner of thinking, talking—all things about him, were a source of wonder and entertainment to the young samourai, who was more than satisfied with this interesting position he had obtained.

“Genji,” now said the Tojin-san abruptly, “you have seen something of the world. At all events you have lived in the open ports among people of other lands. You speak English excellently and must have read considerably. Tell me what is your opinion of this fox-woman?”

Genji Negato was all flattered smiles. He drew up his well-groomed shoulders in a profound French shrug.

“It would give me supreme pleasure to agree with your excellency,” he said ambiguously, and smiled apologetically.

“I see,” said the Tojin-san, “you, too! Why?”

The stiff expression on the interpreter’s face relaxed. In a blurt of confidence he said:

“I have felt the fox-woman’s touch also, honored sir,” and blushed like a boy at the admission.

The Tojin-san was smiling broadly.

“Ah! When?”

“The first night in your service, excellency—a month before your coming.”

“Indeed. Tell me about it.”

“I was changing duty with Samourai Hirata. As a large amount of provisions had been put in the storerooms it was necessary to mount guard at various points of the Shiro and the grounds. I was assigned by the Daimio’s officer to the lodge gates, and there, to my humiliating condemnation be it said, I fell asleep. I carried with me a box containing my rations for the night, and this was strapped upon my back. I am addicted to sleeping on my honorable belly, which your excellency is aware is the proper position for all sleeping animals—to which kingdom I unworthily belong.

“While I slept, I dreamed I was climbing down a mountain-side when suddenly an avalanche of rock and earth swooped down upon my defenceless back, pinioning me to the ground with the excess of its weight. I sought to throw off the burden, shaking my shoulders from side to side, and as I cast back my hands, the better to seize it, something caught them in a quick, elastic grip. I rolled over bodily, and, as I opened my eyes, perceived the fox-woman leaning over me. She had cut loose the straps of my luncheon-box and was drawing it from under my back when, with a cry of rage, I caught her by the shoulders and pulled her down upon me in a vise-like grip. The blood rushed to her unearthly white face, her piercing wild eyes blazed upon mine till my own eyeballs felt afflicted as if with fire. I felt her breath, sweet as the Spring, coming yet nearer and nearer to my face. I was like one inebriated by saké, with but one impulse, one desire, to feel the actual touch of her unhuman face against my own. As finally we touched cheek to cheek, honored excellency, my fingers released their grip. Just as they did so a sharp pain stabbed me in the cheek. Before I could regain my wits the witch was gone.”

He passed his hand nervously across his cheek.

“For weeks afterward my face was marked with the imprint of teeth sharp as a marmoset’s, your excellency.”

“And the luncheon?” queried the American, smiling in spite of himself.

“Gone, too,” said the interpreter, aggrievedly.

The Tojin-san laughed.

“What a curiously greedy elf it is! All its expeditions among mere mortals seem to be solely for the purpose of food-getting.”

Genji opened his little black eyes with an expression of surprise.

“But that is natural. Even a fox-woman needs sustenance.”

“Come to think of it, a fox-woman has the body of a human?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why not make proper provision, and thus protect yourselves from her pilfering?”

“Your excellency forgets that the fox-woman’s origin is malign. No clean Japanese would undertake to nourish an evil spirit. The priests of our temples give us certain charms which protect us, to a certain extent, and we heed their advice, which is ever to avoid and forsake her.”

VII

They had told the Tojin-san in Tokyo that he was to be the first white man to set foot upon Echizen soil since that historical period when the Jesuit fathers in the sixteenth century had come near to Christianizing the nation. The subsequent edicts which expelled all foreigners from the empire and made the study of Christianity a crime to be punished with fire, crucifixion or torture, had had their due effect. All this was long before the coming of the Tojin, however, and Japan had broken its hermit-like seclusion, and now was fearfully and curiously holding out a grudging hand to the Western nations pressing her on all sides.

The foreigner was already a familiar figure in the open ports, but so far, in the interior at least, no white faces were to be seen. It was therefore with amazement that the Tojin-san first discovered signs that one of his race had lived recently in Fukui before him.

It was in the Season of Rain-water, the end of February, a dreary period, when the inexhaustible store of drizzling gray rain dribbled unceasingly from the skies. To break up the monotony and depression of the period he had undertaken, with three favorite students, a short pilgrimage up the Winged Foot River for the purpose of examining a cave at the base of the mountains wherein, they said, had once been a curious image. The country people had believed it to be the image of Buddha’s mother, with her babe in her arms, and pilgrimages were made from all parts of the country because of its supposed healing abilities.

As the Tojin-san examined the cave, with the interest and eagerness of the born scientist and archæologist, the youths explained to him the fate of the image in question. A learned Bonze of the Nichiren sect had recognized it as an image of the “Criminal Faith,” and, in an excess of rage, had broken it into fragments.

Over the entrance of the cave a large board was nailed, and on this was emblazoned the same notice the Tojin had seen wherever he had travelled—in every city, town or hamlet, at every entrance to temple or palace, roadside or mountain-pass. He had often inquired what the notice was, but his questions had always been politely evaded, and once he was somewhat curtly told it was simply one of the laws of old Japan, now rapidly becoming obsolete. Now he turned abruptly upon the young students, who were all deeply devoted to him, and imbued with the new spirit and thirst for knowledge sweeping like a fever over all the empire. They, at least, would answer him.

“Higo, just what is this notice? Translate it for me, will you not?” for the three youths accompanying him spoke the English language with fluency.

Higo replied with a slight flush of embarrassment:

“It simply refers to the Criminal God, your excellency.”

“The Criminal God? You are very vague.”

“Condescend to pardon the allusion, honored sensei,” said the boy, apologetically. “To-day, we are ready to repel all such unworthy references to your exalted nation’s faith.”

“Indeed,” put in earnest-eyed Junzo, “we are not prepared to name any religion or god criminal. Our august Emperor has set us a divine example, since he has honorably thrown open the doors to any and all sects, however odious.”

“And for my part,” contributed Nunuki in his brusque and somewhat surly manner, “I agree with our ancient philosopher: ‘Dogma is a box in which small minds are kept.’”

“Dogma is a form of superstition,” said Junzo, “and superstition awakens the meaner, crueler passions. Do you not agree with me, honored sensei?”

But the latter, his brows drawn in puzzled wonderment, was examining something which had been cut into the wood of the board on which the notice appeared.

“What—” he began, when in a singsong voice, after a slight shrug of his shoulders, Higo began translating the text:

“It reads thus, honored teacher: ‘The evil sect called Christians is strictly prohibited. Suspicious persons should be reported to proper officers and rewards given,’ but be not afraid,” he added hastily, “for it is an old law, and even if still in force to-day your excellency is exempt.”

“I am trying to decipher what is written under it—in English!” said the Tojin-san slowly. He took out and applied a magnifying glass to the board.

A swift, oblique look passed from one student to the other; but when the American turned toward them for enlightenment, their faces were as impassive as their feudal ancestors.

“It appears to me,” said he, thoughtfully, “as though some one had cut words into the woodwork, and that—there are marks as if an attempt had been made to blot out the words. Now let us see: ‘On—this—Thomas Mor—18—’ Why, it is recent—within the last ten years!”

He turned about in a state of intense excitement. Something in the averted faces of his companions increased his curiosity and suspicions. Ere he could frame another question, Nunuki spoke up abruptly:

“It is well you should know the truth, Mr. Teacher. A Guai-koku-jin [outside countryman] lived in Fukui before your time.”

“Recently?” demanded the Tojin-san eagerly.

“Seven years since,” said the boy shortly.

The Tojin-san drew a great breath. His eyes kindled. He looked wonderfully pleased.

“Then that is why some of you students speak English so creditably?”

“No, teacher. Many of us studied in Yokohama. Many have learned by the book alone. After the coming of your exalted Lord Perry, it became the chief ambition of all thoughtful men of the New Japan to learn the English language and its sciences.”

Higo volunteered the above information, but the gruff Nunuki quickly followed him:

“Be not deceived, excellent sensei, in regard to the baku [fool] who was here before you. He was not like you, honored sir.”

“No? What was he, then?”

“He was—damyuraisu,” blurted the boy angrily.

The Tojin-san burst into laughter. It was a colloquial word well known in the open ports, and was applied to the foreign sailor of whatever nationality. It was the Japanization of the sailor’s favorite expression: “Damn your eyes.”

Suddenly his face went grave, remembering how the sailors of the white nations had misrepresented their nations! How, in a constant condition of drunkenness, they rioted around the open ports. The gravity in his face was reflected in that of the students.

“It is a subject,” said Junzo gently, “ignored by common consent in Fukui, because it is painful to our Daimio. He was the fellow’s patron and protector till the time when the honorable beast betrayed him. Pray thee, honored sensei,” he added almost pleadingly, “do not seek to know further in the matter.”

“At least tell me what became of him.”

“Your excellency’s honored feet are surely tired. Your honorable insides must be entirely empty. Food is good in that event. Let us call the kurumma.”

They were moving along the road toward the waiting vehicles, which were to carry them back to the little boat that had brought them down the river. It was indeed chilly and dreary, and their rubber-coats and hats of straw were dripping. The Tojin-san, his arm linked in that of the gentle Junzo, cast a look back at the dimly shadowed mountains, and, as he did so, the boy dreamily remarked:

“The Fox-Woman of Atago Yama will find wet passage back to Sho Kon Sha this night. It is said the streams and rivers are all billowing over, and not even a sprite may spring across them.”

“Have no fear,” said Nunuki gruffly, looking back over his shoulder. “The fox-woman will find wings suitable to her degraded feet. She’ll not lack the shelter so illy deserved.”

The words were so brutal, the tone of the boy so full of animus and hatred that the Tojin-san stopped abruptly. He laid a firm, kindly hand on either lad’s shoulder.

“Who was it spoke this afternoon of superstitions engendered by a fanatical dogma?”

For a moment neither of the students answered, then growlingly Nunuki snarled:

“It is hard to spit against the wind. Facts cannot be altered.”

“By facts—you mean the fox-woman?”

“Her origin, learned sir. It is impossible for the offspring of so vile a union to be otherwise than unclean, as says the law.”

The Tojin-san said solemnly, his hand emphasizing with its pressure on their shoulders his words:

“I know nothing of her origin, but to quote a favorite proverb of your own Japan, remember: ‘The lotus springs from the mud!’”

The Japanese were silenced, deeply moved.

VIII

It became common knowledge in Fukui that the fox-woman had taken up her residence on the Matsuhaira estate. The palace grounds covered nearly twenty acres, and were surrounded like a veritable wall on all sides of the estate by smaller buildings, which had once housed the retainers of the Daimio, but which had not been occupied for years and were in a dishevelled and forlorn condition of ruin and decay. Two of these dwellings had been put in order, and these were occupied by the samourai guard, the aged gateman who guarded the road leading to the mansion and the family of the Tojin-san’s interpreter, who, himself, however, had an apartment in the Shiro.

It was, therefore, quite possible for the fox-woman to find lodging in almost any of the remaining structures, and she could, if she desired, move from one to the other, and when unduly pressed, return to her old refuge of the woods and foot-hills of the mountains that bounded them on two sides of the estate.

More than one of the household had thought they had seen and recognized her. On a still, hazy night, when the golden moon barely showed an inquiring face in promise of the summer nights to come, Genji Negato had shown her to the samourai guard. Just a white, fleeting face glimmering out like that of some hunted thing between the slender, towering trunks of a grove of bamboo. A moment only under the streak of moonbeam, and then it had vanished like a mist at twilight.

Was it a dream, they asked themselves, or indeed a manifestation of the just anger of the Buddha for sins committed in a former state. Were they henceforth to be harassed, goblin-haunted?

And in the dawn, before the sun had barely shown its first glimmer of light across the eastern sky—in the misty, dewy, clammy dawn—the maid Obun had again come face to face with her. Obun was bent upon her usual task of the morning, the bringing of water from the pond to the house. Her eyes were swollen with sleep, she yawned cavernously, and as she stooped to dip the first of the pails into the water, something stirred the other side the pond, and she looked across to gaze, with fascinated eyes, at the fox-woman, whose long, sunlit hair dripped in and out among the lotus and the water-lilies, as if she bathed it in their perfumed purity. Through this dripping veil of hair her face gleamed whitely. Her lips fell apart as though she listened, her eyes were startled, wild, and looked not at but through and beyond the dumbstruck serving-maid as though she saw her not at all. Slowly, stealthily, the fox-woman came to her feet, still with that weird, seeking, listening look upon her face, and thus with backward, shivering glances, she retreated to the bamboo grove.

To his own amused dismay, the Tojin-san found himself constantly on the watch for her. He had never seen the witch, but he had heard and felt her. She crept upon him in the evenings when he strolled about his garden, and she seemed to follow his footsteps with the stealthiness of a wildcat, disappearing as fleetly as the wind at his mere turning.

He was aware of her constant nearness if he merely stepped out of his house. Once when something brushed his cheek he was startled to find himself believing at once that it was she who had touched him. He plunged into the brush at his side, and, in the dark, thrust back the branches of the low-growing trees and bushes only to find himself up to his knees in water where he had stepped unawares into an overgrown rookery and fish-pond. As he floundered helplessly about he heard her softly laughing in a weird, mocking voice, which nevertheless seemed to overrun with tears.

Holding his breath unconsciously he found himself straining his ears to listen to the sound, which indeed was so faint a whisper of a laugh he could have believed he dreamed it.

Sometimes as he drove abroad through the country she called to him from behind sheltering hillocks, and sometimes it seemed her voice floated down to him from some height—some giant tree-top, heavy laden with foliage; for it was the time of “Little Plenty” (May) and all the land was green and warm.

He found himself listening for her call—stopping, waiting for it, and returning with a sense of bitter disappointment when he heard it not. The servants gossiped, the samourai whispered among themselves. They said the fox-woman had put a spell upon him. Genji Negato repeated this to him, and was rewarded by a look of startled contempt and anger.

“Spell!” The man of science repelled the very thought; but he began to avoid the mountain-sides of his estate, and turned in preference to the river-road, whither she could not follow unless she revealed herself.

Late that month, with no advance warning of its coming, whatever, a typhoon swept venomously across the province, leaving in its wake a shattering storm that shook and beat upon the aged Shiro for a day and night; and, in the night, one encountered the shadow of the fox-woman in the great deserted halls of the Matsuhaira mansion.

A wildly shrieking housemaid, calling “Hotogoroshi!” (murder) at the top of her voice, gave the alarm, and from all parts of the palace the menials scuttled like frightened rats, taking refuge in the great kitchen in the rear.

Even Genji Negato, with blanched face and shaking knees, followed the last agitated obi into this dubious shelter. Here fortifying himself with heavier, if not trustier, implements than his swords he recovered his wits sufficiently to attempt to rally the panic-stricken army of servitors. Each in turn was ordered, urged, besought to go to the Tojin-san’s apartment. It was dastardly, so he averred, to leave the foreigner alone to face the unknown peril menacing him. For plain it was to be seen that she who had hitherto confined her malign activities to the large outdoors, had stepped at last across the threshold of the doomed palace. Undoubtedly, the typhoon which had crushed half the city so cruelly had been summoned by the witch in token of her power over them. Something horrible, sinister, was about to happen. Who could tell exactly what; but the signs were evil, evil!

He forgot the difference in his state and rank to these creatures of the kitchen, and found himself confiding to them his worst fears.

The Tojin-san slept from north to south, the position proper for a corpse alone! Genji Negato had pleaded with him to change, but the foreigner had laughed and insisted it was the true, scientific position, from pole to pole, in harmony with the electric currents of the atmosphere.

The night before all four of the samourai guard had heard the plaintive howling of a dog; an owl was seen black athwart the moon; a tail-less cat fled under the Uki (goblin-tree). The samourai had dutifully reported all these happenings to the Tojin-san, and now, when the blow seemed about to fall upon him, this stalwart guard, provided by their prince, were sleeping comfortably in their yashiki on the very edge of the estate. It was the workings of the gods!

Goto, the cook, found his fluttering tongue.

“This very morning,” said he, “I trod thrice upon an egg-shell.”

“I miserably entangled my obi when dressing,” said another.

“And I, alas! bit my tongue when eating. My mistress said it was a sign some one begrudged me my food. Who indeed but this spiteful fiend of the mountains?”

“Twice this week,” wailed the cook’s wife, “little Taro broke his chopsticks when eating.”

She fell to sobbing violently into her sleeve.

“Condescend to hush!” said Genji Negato. “Remaining silent is good.” The interpreter’s yellow face had turned ashen, his hair appeared to stand almost on end, as he listened with suspended breathing.

Outside the wild rain beat against the wind-swept trees, and dashed peltingly against the ancient Shiro. Jagged flashes of lightning zigzagged across the skies showing clearly through the walls, though the amado were in place. It was not, however, to the sound of the tempest that the interpreter was giving ear. Somewhere within the Shiro itself new sounds were heard. It was as if a wind passed along the great halls and corridors and close upon its soft-footed flight there dashed something heavy, pursuing.

Suddenly the main sliding screen or door, which led into the halls, fell inward with a crash. Over it something bounded like a ball of fiery light, passed through the kitchen swift as a lightning flash and shot out into the storm, letting in a gust of rain and wind and thunder through the shaking doors.

A moment later only, and panting like an animal in the chase, the great Tojin burst into the chamber. He stopped short, staring as if confounded at the group shuddering against the farthermost wall. Slowly his gray face relaxed its tension. He tried to speak normally, but in spite of himself his voice shook, though his words were terse, commanding.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Translate that, if you please, to the servants,” he sternly ordered his interpreter.

The latter’s teeth were chattering. He could barely speak.

“Your excellency—you yourself have seen—”

“I saw nothing,” said the Tojin-san, doggedly, “save the figure of a—woman!”

“A woman!” cried the interpreter, almost in tears at the evident stubbornness of this fool-white-man. “Ah, most high-up sir, would you have condescended pursuit of a mere female creature?”

The Tojin-san looked care-worn, haggard, as if he struggled within himself. His deep, stern voice quivered in spite of himself.

“She was pressed against my wall, and fled fleetly as a wild thing when I threw the doors open. The halls were unlighted. I could barely see her. My eyes were dazzled at the sudden darkness. I may have been mistaken. And yet—and yet—it seemed to me—her hair was—gold!”