cried out old Kano in the voice of angry kings. "Nothing
will happen,--nothing, I say, if you act thus like the untamed creature
that you were! Your fate is still in my hands, Kano Tatsu!"

Tatsu fell down upon his knees, pulling at the old man's sleeves.
"Father, father, have pity! I will be self-controlled and docile as I
have been these long, long months. But now there is a thing so great
that would possess me, my soul faints and sickens. Father, I ask your
help, your tenderness. I think I have wronged you from the first,--my
father!"

Suddenly the old man hurled his staff away and sank weeping into the
stronger arms. "I fear, I fear!" he wailed. "It may be still too
early. But she said not,--the abbot counselled it! O gods of the Kano
home!"

"Father," asked Tatsu, rising slowly to his feet, his arms still close
about the other, "can it be joy that is to find me, even in this life?"

"Wait, you shall see," cried the old man, now laughing aloud, now
weeping, like a hysterical girl. "You shall see in a moment! My dead
wife takes me by the hand and leads me from you,--just a little way,
dear Tatsu, just here among the shadows. No longer are the shadows for
you,--joy is for you. Yes, Uta-ko, I 'm coming. The young love
springs like new lilies from the old. Stand still, my son; be hushed,
that joy may find you."

He faltered backward and was lost. Upon the hillside came a stillness
deeper than any previous interval of pause. From it the nightingale's
low note thrust out a wavering clew. The day had gone, and a few stars
dotted the vault of the sky. Tatsu threw back his head. There was no
pain in the gesture now; he was trying to make room in his soul for an
unspeakable visitor. The arch of heaven had grown trivial. Eternity
was his one boundary. The stars twinkled in his blood.

He heard the small human sob again, just at his elbow. All at once he
was frozen in his place; he could not turn or move. His arms hung to
his sides, his throat stiffened in its upward lines. And then a little
hand, stealing from a nun's gray sleeve, slipped into his, and in a
pause, a hush, it was before the full splendor of love's cry, he turned
and saw that it was Ume-ko, his wife.

[Illustration: "Then a little hand, stealing from a nun's gray sleeve,
slipped into his."]

* * * * * *

Yeddo and modern Tokyo alike give entertainment to the traditional nine
days' wonder. Som