tended the round wooden bowl.

"I shall not entreat alms of money in this place," he said, as if in
answer to her look of surprise, "I am weary, and ask but to rest for a
while in the pleasant shade of your roof."

Without waiting for Mata's rejoinder, Ume-ko, who had heard the words of
the priest, now came swiftly to the veranda. "Our home is honored, holy
youth, by your coming," she said to him. "Enter now, I pray, into the
main guest-room, where I and my father may serve you."

The priest refused this homage (much to Mata's inward satisfaction),
saying that he desired only the stone ledge of the kitchen entrance and a
cup of cold water.

After his first swift upward look he dared not raise his eyes again. The
sweetness of her young voice thrilled and troubled him. But for his
promise to Uchida he would have fled at once, as from temptation.
Ume-ko, seeing his embarrassment, withdrew, but not until she had made an
imperious gesture to old Mata, commanding her to serve him with rice and
tea.

After a short struggle with himself the priest decided to accept the
offer of food. Old Mata, he knew, was to be his source of information.
The old dame served him in conscious silence. Her lips were compressed
to wrinkled metal. The visitor, more accustomed to old women than to
young, smiled at the rigid countenance, knowing that a loquacity
requiring so obvious a latch is the more easily freed. He planned his
first question with some care.

"Is this not the home of an artist, Kano by name?"

Mata tossed her gray hair. "Of the only Kano," she replied, and shut her
lips with a snap.

"The only Kano, the only Kano," mused the acolyte over his tea.

"So I said, young sir. Is it that your hearing is honorably
non-existent?"

"Then I presume he is without a son," said the priest as if to himself,
and stirred the surmise into his rice with the two long wooden chopsticks
Mata had provided.

The old dame's muscles worked, but she kept silence.

Ume-ko, now in her little chamber across the narrow passage, with a bit
of bright-colored sewing on her knees, could hear each word of the
dialogue. Mata's shrill voice and the priest's deep tones each carried
well. The girl smiled to herself, realizing as she did the conflict
between love of gossip and disapproval of Shingon priests that now made a
paltry battlefield of the old dame's mind. The former was almost sure to
win. The priest must have thought this, too, for