among the pilings of a boat-landing several hundred feet
farther down the tide. A thin, sluggish stream of blood followed it
like a clue, and, when he was dragged up upon the bank, gushed out
terribly from a wound near his temple. He had seized, in falling,
Ume-ko's lacquered geta, and his fingers could not be unclasped. In
spite of the early hour (across the river the sun still peered through
folds of shimmering mist) quite a crowd of people gathered.

"It is the newly adopted son of Kano Indara," they whispered, one to
another. "He is but a few weeks married to Kano's daughter, and is
called 'The Dragon Painter.'"

The efficient river-police summoned an ambulance, and had him taken to
the nearest hospital. Here, during an entire day, every art was
employed to restore him to consciousness, but without success. Life,
indeed, remained. The flow of blood was stopped, and the wound
bandaged, but no sign of intelligence awoke.

"It is to be an illness of many weeks, and of great peril," answered
the chief physician that night to Kano's whispered question. The old
man turned sorrowfully away and crept home, wondering whether now, at
this extremity, the gods would utterly desert him.

Mata, prostrated at first by the loss of her nursling, soon rallied her
practical old wits. She went, in secret, to the hospital, demanded
audience of the house physician, and gave to him all details of the
strange situation which had culminated in Ume's desperate act of
self-renunciation, and induced Tatsu's subsequent madness. She did not
ask for a glimpse of the sick man. Indeed she made no pretence of
kindly feeling toward him, for, in conclusion, she said, "Now, August
Sir, if, with your great skill in such matters, you succeed in giving
back to this young wild man the small amount of intelligence he was
born with, I caution you, above all things, keep from his reach such
implements of self-destruction as ropes, knives, and poisons. Oh, he
is an untamed beast, Doctor San. His love for my poor young mistress
was that of a lion and a demon in one. He will certainly slay himself
when he has the strength. Not that I care! His death would bring
relief to me, for in our little home he is like the spirit of storm
caged in a flower. Would I had never seen him, or felt the influence
of his evil karma! But my poor old master still dotes on him, and,
with Miss Ume vanished, if this Dragon Painter, too, should die at
once, Kano co