u could give me?"

"No, no! I dare not!" said the other, in an agitated voice. He reached
out for his bowl and, with a single leap, was down upon the earth. Mata
caught him by his flying skirts. "See here," she entreated, "I will make
it worth your while, young sir, I will give donations to your temple----"

"I dare not. I have no instructions to meddle with such things. Let me
now give the house a blessing, and withdraw. But I can tell you for your
comfort," he added, seeing the disappointment in her wrinkled face, "if,
as you assure me, this is a house of faith, no presence entirely evil
could dwell within it."

He got away before she could repeat her importunities; and the old dame
returned to the kitchen, muttering anathemas against the mystic powers
she had just attempted to invoke.

On the priest's return, Ando questioned him eagerly. He gained, almost
with the first words, certainty of his own freedom. With Tatsu safely
arrived, and the betrothal to Kano Ume-ko an outspoken affair, then had
the time come for him--Ando Uchida--to reassume the pleasant role of
friend and benefactor.

He moved into Yeddo before nightfall. His first visit was, of course, to
Kano. Elaborately he explained to the sympathetic old man how he had
been summoned by telegram into a distant province to attend the supposed
death-bed of a relative, how that relative had, by a miracle, recovered.
"So now," he remarked in conclusion, "I am again at your service, and
shall take the part not only of nakodo in the coming marriage, but of
temporary father and social sponsor to our unsophisticated bridegroom."

Certainly nothing could have been more opportune than Uchida's
reappearance, or more welcome than his proposed assistance. Mata,
indeed, hastened to give a whole koku of rice to the poor in
thank-offering that one sensible person besides herself was now
implicated in the wedding preparations.

Uchida justified, many times over, her belief in him. In the district
near the Kano home he rented, in Tatsu's name, a small cottage, paying
for it by the month, in advance. With Mata's assistance, not to mention
a small colony of hirelings, the floors were fitted with new mats, the
woodwork of the walls, the posts, and veranda floors polished to a
mirror-like brightness, and even the tiny garden set with new turf and
flowering plants. Tatsu was lured down from the mountain side and
persuaded to remain at night and part, at least,