Visions of
Tatsu drowned; of Tatsu heaped under a wreck of burning cars; starved
to death in a solitary forest; set upon, robbed, and slain by footpads,
all spun--black silhouettes in a revolving lantern--through Kano's
frenzied imagination. It was at this point that Uchida had hid
himself, and assumed a false name.

In another week the gentle Ume began to grow pale and silent under the
small tyrannies of her father. Mata openly declared her belief that it
was a demon now on the way to them, since he had power to change the
place into a cave of torment even before arrival. After Uchida's
defection old Kano remained constantly at home. Many hours at a time
he stood upon the moon-viewing hillock of his garden, staring up, then
down the street, up and down, up and down, until it was weariness to
watch him. Within the rooms he was merely one curved ear, bent in the
direction of the entrance gate. His nervousness communicated itself to
the women of the house. They, too, were listening. More than one
innocent visitor had been thrown into panic by the sight of three
strained faces at the gate, and three pairs of shining eyes set
instantly upon them.

One twilight hour, late in August, Tatsu came. After an eager day of
watching, old Kano had just begun to tell himself that hope was over.
Tatsu had certainly been killed. The ihai might as well be set up, and
prayers offered for the dead man's soul. Ume-ko, wearied by the heat,
and the incessant strain, lay prone upon her matted floor, listening to
the chirp of a bell cricket that hung in a tiny bamboo cage near by.
The clear notes of the refrain, struck regularly with the sound of a
fairy bell, had begun to help and soothe her. Mata sat dozing on the
kitchen step.

A loud, sudden knock shattered in an instant this precarious calm.
Kano went through the house like a storm. Mata, being nearest, flung
the panel of the gate aside. There stood a creature with tattered blue
robe just to the knees, bare feet, bare head, with wild, tossing locks
of hair, and eyes that gleamed with a panther's light.

"Is it--is it--Tatsu?" screamed the old man, hurling his voice before
him.

"It is a madman," declared the servant, and flattened herself against
the hedge.

Ume said nothing at all. After one look into the stranger's face she
had withdrawn, herself unseen, into the shadowy rooms.

"I am Tatsu of Kiu Shiu," announced the apparition, in a voice of
strange depth and