mson death-name.'"

"How shall that come to pass, augustness?" I asked upon my face.

"'Through his son,'" said the god. "'The names are the same. Arise and
light the lamps and burn the bitter incense.'"

"And the augustness only vanished with the light of the new lamps I
lighted before Shijiro's tablet."

"Yet," doubted Namishima, though a deity had spoken, "the vengeance of
the gods must also first be accomplished--yea, satisfied full! And until
he is redeemed by this unhappy onna-jin, must our brother wander in the
dark Meido--so think I! The new lamps will be sacrilege."

"Nevertheless, one cannot honorably tell," argued the milder uncle from
Osaka, himself not convinced by his vision. "His father was no taller
nor of a greater spirit than he. He may not always be an onna-jin. And,
also, any day the vengeance of the gods may be satisfied and they will
permit him to redeem both his own and the spirit of his father. For I
believe it true that he was not beheaded by the victors at Jokoji, and
cast into the ditch as dogs are cast, but committed the honorable
seppuku upon himself. That he would do."

"Let it be hoped so. This is our one blot wherefore we cannot speak of
our ancestors."

And they chafed a prayer from between their hands that it might all be
so.

The little boy parted the fusuma yet more and looked. He had been taught
that his face must always be as expressionless as if it were always
under observation. And these old uncles had, more than others, taught
him so. Yet now they were not observing their own precepts. Their faces
were unmasked, and showed terror and anxiety. And this communicated
itself to the boy as he looked.

"Does it matter to the gods," asked Kiomidzu, "how fealty to the
heaven-born-one is augustly inculcated?"

"'The way does not matter when one is arrived!'" said Namishima.

"And 'a lie which doeth good,'" quoted Kiomidzu, "'is, manifestly, a
good lie.'"

"Happy is he," said Namishima, "who, being a liar for the truth, is
willing, like us, to abide by its consequences from the unenlightened,
to whom there is but one office in a lie--evil!"

"Nembutsu!" agreed the brother of Namishima, his hard hands rasping with
his prayer as do the soles of worn sandals.

And then they went on, to the end of the story of this picture of "The
Great Death," which had been painted and hung at the tokonoma when
Arisuga was a child to deceive him into thinking that his father had
honorably f