sand hells!" he shrieked, springing to a sitting posture
in his bed, and beating the air about him with distracted hands.
"These are the memories that whir down and close about me in a cloud of
stinging wasps! I cannot endure! In the name of Shaka, whom you
worship, strike me dead with the staff you hold,--then will I bless you
and believe!" In a transport of madness, he leaned out, clutching at
the staff, clawing down the stiff robes from the abbot's throat,
snarling, praying, menacing with a vehemence so terrible, that the
little acolyte, flinging down the still-burning koro, screamed aloud
for help.

It was many hours before the nurses and physicians could quiet this
last paroxysm. Exhaustion and a relapse followed. The long, dull
waiting on hope began anew. After this no visitor but Kano was
allowed. He entered the sick chamber only at certain hours, placing
himself near the head of the bed where Tatsu need not see him. He
never spoke except in answer to questions addressed him directly by his
son, and these came infrequently enough. With this second slow return
to vitality, Tatsu's most definite emotion seemed to be hatred of his
adopted father. He writhed at the sound of that timid, approaching
step, and dreaded the first note of the deprecating voice.

Kano was fully aware of this aversion. He realized that, perhaps, it
would be better for Tatsu if he did not come at all; yet in this one
issue the selfishness of love prevailed. Age and despair were to be
kept at bay. He had no weapons but the hours of comparative peace he
spent at Tatsu's bedside. Full twenty years seemed added to the old
man's burden of life. His back was stooped far over; his feet shuffled
along the wooden corridors with the sound of the steps of one too
heavily burdened. He never walked now without the aid of his friendly
bamboo cane. The threat of Tatsu's self-destruction echoed always in
his ears. Away from the actual presence of his idol it gnawed him like
a famished wolf, and his mind tormented itself with fantastic and
dreadful possibilities. Once Tatsu had hidden under his foreign pillow
the china bowl in which broth was served. Kano whispered his discovery
to the nurse, and when she wondered, explained to her with shivering
earnestness that it was undoubtedly the boy's intention to break it
against the iron bedstead the first moment he was left alone, and with
a shard sever one of his veins. Tatsu grinned like a tr