en released plunged into
noiseless tumult with opposing fumes. The kitchen was a crucible, and
the old dame a mediaeval alchemist. The flames and smoke striving
upward, as if to reach her bending face, made it glow with the hue of
the copper kettle, a wrinkled copper, etched deep with lines of life,
of merriment, perplexity, of shrewd and practical experience.

As she stirred, testing by nose and eye the rapid completion of her
work, she was determining to put aside for her own use a goodly share
of the beneficent fluid. The coming of the wild man had unnerved her
terribly. In the threatening family change she could perceive nothing
but menace. Apprehension even now weighed down upon her, a
foreshadowing of evil that had, somehow, a present hostage in the deep
silence of Ume's room. Of what was her nursling thinking? How had it
seemed to her, so guarded, and so delicately reared, this being
summoned like a hired geisha to dance before a stranger,--a ragged,
unkempt, hungry stranger! Even her father's well-known madness for
things of art could scarcely atone to his child for this indignity.

Kano had gone promptly to his bath. He was now emerging. His bare
feet grazed the wooden corridor. Mata ran to him. "Good! Ah, that
was good!" he said heartily. "Five years of aches have I left in the
tub!" Within his chamber the andon was already lighted, and the long,
silken bed-cushions spread. Mata assisted him to slip down carefully
between the mattress and the thin coverlid. She patted and arranged
him as she would a child, and then went to fetch the draught. "Mata,
thou art a treasure," he said, as she knelt beside him, the bowl
outstretched. He drained the last drop, and the old friends exchanged
smiles of answering satisfaction. Before leaving him she trimmed and
lowered the andon so that its yellow light would be a mere glimmer in
the darkness.

She moved now deliberately to Ume's fusuma, tapping lightly on the
lacquered frame. "Miss Ume! O Jo San!" she called. Nothing answered.

Mata parted the fusuma an inch. The Japanese matted floor, even in
darkness, gives out a sort of ghostly, phosphorescent glow. Thus, in
the unlit space Mata could perceive that the girl lay at full length,
her Dragon Robe changed to an ordinary house dress, her long hair
unbound, her face turned downward and hidden on an outstretched arm.
It was not a pose of grief, neither did it hint of slumber.

"Honorable Young Lad