uch a marriage?"

Mata's eyes gleamed sharp and bright as the needle. "Because he is as
mad as the wild man, and all for pictures! They would strip their own
skins off if that made better parchment. Miss Ume has been influenced
by them, and now is to be sacrificed. Alas! the evil day!" and Mata
wiped away some genuine tears on the hem of a night-robe she had
finished.

"O kinodoku Sama, my spirit is poisoned by your grief," murmured the
other, sympathetically. "Yet, in your place, I should find great
comfort in the outfit of your mistress. Never, even in the sewing
halls of princes, could more beautiful silks be gathered." She looked
about slowly, with the air of a professional who sees something really
worthy of regard.

Mata's face cleared. "Since the gods allow it, I should not complain,"
she admitted. "Indeed, Mr. Uchida and I are doing well by the young
couple in the matter of silks and house furnishings. And--whisper this
not--no one but he and I dream from what source these splendid fabrics
come!"

Mata had thrust a poisoned arrow of curiosity into her listener, and
knew it. Some day, perhaps the very day before the wedding, she might
reveal it. For the present, as she said, no one but herself and Uchida
knew.

More than once during sewing hours, Ume-ko herself had wondered how her
father was able to give her silks of such beauty and variety. With the
unthrift of the true artist, Kano was always poor. The old man would
have been as surprised and far angrier than his daughter, had he known
that Tatsu's pictures, stolen craftily by the confederates, Uchida and
Mata, and sold in Yokohama for about a tenth of their true value, were
the source of this sudden affluence. Tatsu remained ignorant, also.
But, provided they took no image of Ume's face, he would not have cared
at all. New garments, new mats, dainty household furnishings, were
showered upon him, too; but they might have been autumn leaves, for all
the interest he showed.

To gain his Dragon Maid,--to know that in this life she was irrevocably
his,--that was Tatsu's one conscious thought.

The wedding day came at last. Ume-ko had written no letter on the eve
of it, but all night long she felt that he was near her, leaning on the
breast of the plum tree, scaling the steeps above her, wandering, a
restless ghost of joy, about the moon-silvered cemetery, speaking
perhaps, as equal, to his primeval gods. So close, already were these
two