Geoffrey was hurrying homeward along the banks of the moat. The
stagnant, viscous water was yellow under the sunset, and a yellow
light hung over the green slopes, the grey walls and the dark tree
tops. An echelon of geese passed high overhead in the region of the
pale moon. Within the mysterious _enclave_ of the "Son of Heaven" the
crows were uttering their harsh sarcastic croak.

Witchery is abroad in Tokyo during this brief sunset hour. The
mongrel nature of the city is less evident. The pretentious Government
buildings of the New Japan assume dignity with the deep shadows and
the heightening effect of the darkness. The untidy network of tangled
wires fades into the coming obscurity. The rickety trams, packed to
overflowing with the city crowds returning homeward, become creeping
caterpillars of light. Lights spring up along the banks of the moat.
More lights are reflected from its depth. Dark shadows gather like
a frown round the Gate of the Cherry Field, where Ii Kamon no Kami's
blood stained the winter snow-drifts some sixty years ago, because he
dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners;
and in the cry of the _tofu_-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a
long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels
and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against the overhead
lines.

Geoffrey, sitting back in his rickshaw, turned up his coat-collar, and
watched the gathering pall of cloud extinguishing the sunset.

"Looks like snow," he said to himself; "but it is impossible!"

At the entrance to the Imperial Hotel--a Government institution, as
almost everything in Japan ultimately turns out to be--Tanaka was
standing in his characteristic attitude of a dog who waits for his
master's return. Characteristically also, he was talking to a man,
a Japanese, a showy person with spectacles and oily buffalo-horn
moustaches, dressed in a vivid pea-green suit. However, at Geoffrey's
approach, this individual raised his bowler-hat, bobbed and vanished;
and Tanaka assisted his patron to descend from his rickshaw.

As he approached the door of his suite, a little cloud of hotel _boys_
scattered like sparrows. This phenomenon did not as yet mean anything
to Geoffrey. The native servants were not very real to him. But he
was soon to realize that the _boy san_--Mister Boy, as his dignity now
insists on being called--is more than an amusing contribution to the
local atmosphere. When