iend."

Within the convent yard,--a sandy space enclosed in long, low buildings
of unpainted wood,--Tatsu saw a few gray figures hurrying to cover; and
noticed that more than one bright pair of eyes peered out at them
through bamboo lattices. Over the whole place brooded the spirit of
unearthly peace and sweetness which had been within the gift of the
holy bishop and his acolytes even at that time of torment in the
hospital cell. The same faint Presence, like a plum tree blossoming in
the dark, stole through the young man's senses, luring and distressing
him with its infinite suggestions of lost peace.

At the farther wall of the court they came to an answering door. This
was already unlocked and partially ajar. It opened directly upon the
highest terrace of the cemetery which led down steeply in great,
curved, irregular steps to a plain. The crimson light in the west had
almost gone. Here to the north, where rice-fields and small huddled
villages stretched out as far as the eye could see, a band of hard,
white light still rested on the horizon, throwing back among the
hillside graves a pale, metallic sheen. Each shaft of granite was thus
divided, one upright half, blue shadow, the other a gray-green gleam.
All looked of equal height. A gray stone Buddha on his lotos pedestal,
or the long graceful lines of a standing Jizo, only served to emphasize
the uniformity.

This was a place most dear to Kano, and had been made so to his child.
He even loved the look of the tombs. "Gray, splintered stalagmites of
memory," he had called them, and when the child Ume had learned the
meaning of the simile she had put her little finger to a spot of lichen
and asked, "Then are these silver spots our tears?"

The old man stepped down very softly to the second tier. A nightingale
was calling low its liquid invocation, "Ho-ren-k-y-y-o-o-o!" Perhaps
old Kano moved so softly that he might not lose the echoes of this cry.
The two men seemed alone in the silent scene. Once Tatsu thought his
eye caught a swift flicker, as of a gray sleeve, but he was not sure.
At any rate he would not think of it, or speculate, or marvel! He was
beginning to tremble before the unknown. The sense of shrinking, of
miracle, of being, perhaps, too small to contain the thing decreed,
bore hard upon him. With it came a keen impression of the unreality of
the material universe,--of Buddhist illusion. Even these adamantine
records of death, rising o